Research Uncovers ‘Mind-Blowing’ Connection Between Emotions and Language
Turns out, a sunny disposition and penchant for grammar may go hand in hand.
Brock neuroscientist Veena Dwivedi, who takes up the role of Director of the University’s Centre for Neuroscience on Monday, July 1, has been exploring how a positive outlook on life can help people to improve their language skills.
The Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience researches the impact of emotions on the brain’s ability to process language, an area with implications for both youth and older adults.
Emotional states unlock language ability, she says, referring to a project she incorporated in her Neuropsychology course in which students used music to spark conversation with elderly residents in the Extended Care Unit of a local hospital.
Emotional responses evoked by music have enabled some older adults living with neurological impairments to start speaking and sharing their memories again following long periods of silence, as shown in the documentary Alive Inside, Dwivedi says.
In one of her earlier studies, she and her team explored the connection between someone’s frame of mind and their capacity to spot grammatical errors.
Dwivedi used a standardized measurement in the field of psychology — the Positive Affect Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) — to determine the emotional temperament of university-aged research participants.
During the study, Dwivedi’s team measured the brainwave patterns of participants while they read emotionally neutral sentences containing grammatical errors. Participants who rated positive on the PANAS scale had a significantly greater difference between brainwaves than those who rated negative on the scale.
Dwivedi aims to do future research on the exact brain mechanisms that makes this the case but says the difference could indicate someone’s eagerness to figure out the proper meaning because they care about doing so.
She says the study result that one’s emotional inner state affects brain response to neutral sentences was “mind blowing” for her.
“If the sentence has emotional content, you might think that if your mood matches the mood of the sentence, OK, emotions will play a role,” says Dwivedi, adding that she wasn’t expecting the same result with neutral sentences.
The results of this and other studies conducted by Dwivedi and her team showing the link between emotion and language processing have “obvious mental health lessons” throughout the lifespan, she says.
For example, older adults who have positive outlooks — through experiences such as good social connections or being physically active — will be better communicators, she says.
“Better communication leads to less social isolation,” says Dwivedi. “It’s a loop that is worth developing for brain health.”
In another study, her group tested university-age participants’ brainwaves when reading intentionally confusing sentences.
Participants who were assessed as having a less negative emotional temperament had larger brainwave differences compared to those being rated more negative.
Dwivedi says participants with the larger brainwave differences were better able to make connections between words because they were more relaxed due to how they felt, which enabled them to better pick up on context violations.
She notes many older adults are generally more relaxed than their younger counterparts. Added to that, older adults have far more life experience than young adults, enabling them to make more word associations, says Dwivedi.
Beyond that, words themselves are powerful and have the ability to influence whether one’s outlook is more positive or negative, she says.