{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,5]],"date-time":"2026-06-05T10:07:28Z","timestamp":1780654048441,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":29,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,5]],"date-time":"2026-06-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1780617600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"2025 University-level Research Program of Anshun University","award":["asxybsjj202517"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["asxybsjj202517"]}]},{"name":"Development Project of Young Scientific and Technological Talents in Colleges and Universities of Guizhou Province","award":["KY [2022] 042"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["KY [2022] 042"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Behavioral Sciences"],"abstract":"<jats:p>To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying how context emotionality and second language (L2) proficiency influence novel word acquisition, we recruited 48 college students and asked them to learn new words within emotional contexts. We recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) during word recognition and selected the N1 (70\u2013160 ms) component at frontal and central sites and the late positive complex (LPC; 500\u2013750 ms) component at frontal, central, and parietal sites for statistical analysis. The results showed that words learned in a positive context elicited larger N1 waves in the left frontal region and smaller LPC waves in frontal regions than words learned in a negative context. Furthermore, in the higher-proficiency group, words learned in a negative context induced larger LPC waves in the left posterior region than in the lower-proficiency group. These findings led us to three conclusions: (1) A positive context activates neural responses more rapidly and attenuates them during the late processing stage. (2) L2 fluency modulates the extent to which a negative context affects new word recognition. (3) Higher fluency amplifies the role of learning context in word processing. This study sheds light on how the emotional context and L2 proficiency jointly shape the neural dynamics of vocabulary learning, and future research should explore these mechanisms across diverse learner populations and with more naturalistic learning tasks to better inform emotion-integrated language instruction.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/bs16060925","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,5]],"date-time":"2026-06-05T08:43:04Z","timestamp":1780648984000},"page":"925","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Context Emotionality and Second Language Proficiency Influence Vocabulary Acquisition: An ERP Study"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Shunhua","family":"Liu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Education Science, Anshun University, Anshun 561000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9085-9868","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yutong","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"310","DOI":"10.1177\/1367006910379261","article-title":"The representation of emotion vs. emotion-laden words in English and Spanish in the affective Simon task","volume":"15","author":"Altarriba","year":"2011","journal-title":"International Journal of Bilingualism"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"299","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijpsycho.2010.09.004","article-title":"Reading emotional words within sentences: The impact of arousal and valence on event-related potentials","volume":"78","author":"Bayer","year":"2010","journal-title":"International Journal of Psychophysiology"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"939","DOI":"10.1017\/S1366728923000998","article-title":"How first-and second-language emotion words influence emotion perception in Swedish\u2013English bilinguals","volume":"27","author":"Nook","year":"2024","journal-title":"Bilingualism: Language and Cognition"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cohen, J. 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