Differential affective processing has been widely documented for bilinguals: L1 affective words elicit higher levels of arousal and stronger emotionality ratings than L2 affective words (Pavlenko, 2012). In this study, we focus on two closely related Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, whose affective lexicons are highly overlapping, with shared lexical items that only differ in pronunciation across languages. We recorded L1 Cantonese – L2 Mandarin bilinguals’ pupil responses to auditory tokens of Cantonese and Mandarin affective words. Our results showed that Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals had stronger pupil responses when the affective words were pronounced in Cantonese (L1) than when the same words were pronounced in Mandarin (L2). The effect was most evident in taboo words and among bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings in the frameworks of exemplar theory and models of the bilingual lexicon.

双语者的差异情感处理已被广泛记录：第一语言情感词比第二语言情感词引发更高水平的唤醒和更强的情绪评级（Pavlenko，2012）。在这项研究中，我们关注两种密切相关的中文：普通话和粤语，它们的情感词汇高度重叠，共享的词汇项目仅在不同语言的发音上有所不同。我们记录了 L1 粤语 - L2 普通话双语者的学生对粤语和普通话情感词的听觉标记的反应。我们的结果表明，粤语-普通话双语者在用粤语（L1）发音情感词时比用普通话（L2）发音相同词时的瞳孔反应更强。这种效应在禁忌词和母语水平较低的双语者中最为明显。