Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning

This method could provide important insight into how learners acquire foreign language grammar, as well as about the rule of individual differences in affective states in grammar learning. This technique separates vocabulary from grammar. So it allows us to assess the effects of induced emotion of grammar learning without having to worry about interference from lexical learning.

Have the participant sit in front of a computer and ask the participant to read and sign the written consent forms. Next, give the participant the pencil and paper version of the self-assessment Manikin pictorial rating scale and ask the participant to use a pencil to rate their emotion by marking the corresponding manikin. Have the participants in the experimental group listen to positively valenced music through headphones for 10 minutes.

At the end of the emotion induction period, ask the participant to rate their emotional state on a new self-assessment Manikin scale. Before beginning the training task, present written instructions for the task on the screen of the computer in the native language of the participant. The instructions should read, Welcome to our experiment.

In this experiment, you will be required to learn a novel language that contains native language words and new grammar. When you are ready, press any key to proceed to the experiment. After the participant has pressed a key, a new set of instructions should appear.

Next, you will see some sentences. Please read them carefully and decide whether they are grammatically correct or not. Press one if the sentences are grammatical and zero if they are ungrammatical.

After each response you will receive feedback, correct or incorrect, and the correct sentence will be presented. Press any key to proceed to the learning task. The participant should then judge the grammatical acceptability of the sentences on the computer screen as directed and the feedback should be presented on the screen after the participant's response followed by the correct sentence.

When all of the trials have been completed, the text, The learning task is finished, should appear on the screen. At the end of the training, give the participant the pencil and paper version of the self-assessment Manikin scale and ask them to rate their emotional condition. When the training task is complete, present the testing session instructions on the computer screen.

The instructions should read, Please continue to answer questions similar to those observed during the training. Decide whether the grammatical structures of the following sentences are correct. Press one if you think they are correct and press zero if you think they are incorrect.

Press any key to start the experiment. Have the participant read the sentences shown on the screen and judge whether the sentence's structures are grammatical correct as instructed. When all of the trials have been completed, text should appear on the screen that reads, The end.

Thank you for participating. Then ask the participant to fill out a questionnaire about their demographic details. In this representative analysis, participants in the positive emotion group reported being significantly happier than those in the control group, indicating a successful emotion induction.

Further, the emotional states of the participants in each group were sustained during the training phase. Assessment of the mean accuracy of the grammar learning by the two groups revealed a significant affective emotion and sentence type with the participants in the control group performing significantly more accurately than those in the positive emotion condition group. In addition, subject indirect object direct object verb and subject object verb subject verb structures were comprehended less accurately than subject object verb and object subject verb subject verb structures.

Reaction time analysis indicating that there was a significant affective emotion and sentence type with the participants in the control group reacting faster than those in the positive emotional state group. Subject object verb structures were recognized faster than the other three structures and subject indirect object direct object verb structures were recognized more slowly than other structures. It is essential to design a semi-artificial language that contains the lexicon of the participant's native language and the grammar of the tested foreign language.

This protocol can also be used to explore the effects of other affective variables on grammar learning, such as anxiety or motivation.