Brains of bilingual readers repress negative words
雙語閱讀者的大腦會抑制負面字眼

Reading a nasty word in a second language may not pack the punch it would in your native tongue, thanks to an unconscious brain quirk that tamps down potentially disturbing emotions, a new study finds.

When reading negative words such as “failure” in their non-native language, bilingual Chinese-English speakers did not show the same brain response as seen when they read neutral words such as “aim.” The finding suggests that the brain can process the meaning of words in the unconscious, while “withholding” information from our conscious minds.

“We think we’ve identified, for the first time, the mechanism by which emotion controls fundamental thought processes outside consciousness,” study researcher Wu Yanjin, a psychologist at Bangor University in the UK, said in a statement.

It is not yet clear why the brain dampens the response to these words, the researchers reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.(Liberty Times)

用第二語言唸一個不雅字眼，威力或許不如用母語讀來得大，這是拜大腦一種無意識的奇怪特性之賜，新研究發現，這種特性會壓制可能令人不安的情緒。

說中英雙語的人以非母語語言唸像「失敗」這類負面字眼時，不會出現讀到「目的」等這類中性字眼時同樣的大腦反應，這項發現表示，大腦可在無意識下處理字句意義，「壓制」訊息不讓我們有意識的心智察知。

「我們認為，我們首次找出了情緒在人的意識之外控制基本思維過程的機制」，進行這項研究的英國班戈大學心理學家吳嚴金在聲明中說。

研究人員在《神經科學期刊》發表的報告中說，目前還不清楚大腦為何抑制對這些字眼的反應。

（自由時報/翻譯：管淑平）