Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Seminar

9.15-10.15 Professor Hyeonjeong Jeong, Tohoku University, Japan (Hyeonjeong Jeong (0000-0002-5094-5390) - ORCID)

The Social and Embodied Foundations of Second Language Learning

Abstract
Language is fundamentally social and embodied, yet adult second language (L2) learning often relies on decontextualized words and rules. Building on the Social L2 Learning framework (Li & Jeong, 2020), this talk considers how social interaction, simulated social contexts, and real-world exposure ground L2 representations in perceptual, sensorimotor, affective, and episodic experience. I will present a series of recent and ongoing fMRI studies examining complementary forms of such grounding. Learning novel emotional words with congruent facial expressions and emotional prosody enhanced both one-month retention and perceived emotionality, while eliciting stronger amygdala responses during retrieval. Seeing a speaker’s face improved L2 shadowing and recruited systems associated with audiovisual integration, memory, and engagement. Iconic gestures supported later word recognition and engaged posterior temporal regions involved in multimodal semantic processing; during L2 encoding, greater left posterior middle temporal gyrus recruitment was associated with better subsequent memory. Finally, attitudinal prosody recruited socio-cognitive systems involved in inferring speakers’ intentions, while informal L2 exposure was associated with better prosody identification and greater hippocampal and thalamic activation. Together, these findings suggest that social context is not merely a background condition: face, voice, gesture, and experience become part of how L2 meanings are encoded, remembered, and interpreted. I will conclude by discussing implications for socially grounded, multimodal, and interaction-oriented language learning.
 

10.15-11.00 Dr. Xueqiao Li, Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (Xueqiao Li (0000-0003-1053-667X) - ORCID)

Learning of Foreign Phonetic Features and Words in Social Context: Behavioral and brain activity results

11.00-11.30 Dr. Najla Azaiez Zammit Chatti, Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (Najla Azaiez Zammit Chatti | University of Jyväskylä)

Foreign Language Learning in VR environments

11.30-12.30 Lunch break (at your own expense)

12.30-13.15 Professor Takatsune Kumada, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan (Takatsune Kumada (0000-0002-0198-0501) - ORCID)

Vicarious Disappointment, Belief Collapse, and Reconstruction in Football Fans Following Defeat: A Bayesian Belief-Updating State-Transition Model Using Four-Wave Data from Pre-Match to One-Month Post-Match

13.15-14.00 Dr. Ayumi Takemoto, Department of Clinical Psychology, Hanazono University, Japan (Ayumi Takemoto (0000-0003-0998-773X) - ORCID)

When Does Emotion Become Feeling? - The Missing Link Between Emotion and Feeling

14.00-14.30 Coffee break (at your own expense)
 

14.30-15.15 Professor Piia Astikainen, Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (Piia Astikainen (0000-0003-4842-7460) - ORCID)

Predictive Processing of Facial Expressions and Affective Modulation: Electrophysiological Evidence

15.15-16.00 Closing Discussion: Future Directions and Collaboration