Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Across two experiments, we tested whether valence and arousal interact during speeded affective judgements, and whether this interaction differed between pictures and words, or between L1 and L2 words. German–English sequential bilinguals immersed in an L1 environment completed an affective judgement task. Experiment 1 focused on valence judgements (e.g., positive vs. negative) whereas Experiment 2 focused on arousal judgements (e.g., arousing vs. calming). In Experiment 1, a Valence–Arousal interaction pattern was present only within picture stimuli. In Experiment 2, this pattern was evident for all stimulus types showing that task demands shaped when the interaction was observable in words. Across both experiments, the interaction did not differ between L1 and L2 word blocks, suggesting that both languages were processed similarly. These findings suggest that speeded affective appraisals were not strongly language specific in highly proficient bilinguals. L2-only analyses showed that bilingual experience variables moderated response times.