Appraisal psychology, neurobiology, and language

This volume of The Annual Review of Applied Linguistics explores the connections between psychology and language. In the following chapter, I will show how a field that increasingly informs psychology can also inform the psychological issues that concern applied linguists. Neurobiology and psychology have become more closely integrated in recent years as evidenced by the emergence and development of such disciplinary interfaces as biopsychology and cognitive neuroscience. The recognition that psychological phenomena are subserved by the brain is widely accepted; via developments in neuroimaging technology, the brain is becoming amenable to direct psychological investigation. In this chapter, I examine brain mechanisms that are involved in second language acquisition motivation, in cognitive/motor exploratory activity in learning, and in decision-making aspects of pragmatics in language use.

[1]  Sophie K. Scott,et al.  Impaired auditory recognition of fear and anger following bilateral amygdala lesions , 1997, Nature.

[2]  J. Russell,et al.  A Role for the Human Amygdala in Recognizing Emotional Arousal From Unpleasant Stimuli , 1999 .

[3]  Scott T. Grafton,et al.  Amygdala activity related to enhanced memory for pleasant and aversive stimuli , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[4]  Peter Dayan,et al.  Bee foraging in uncertain environments using predictive hebbian learning , 1995, Nature.

[5]  R. Depue,et al.  Neurobiology of the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[6]  Edmund T. Rolls,et al.  A theory of emotion and consciousness, and its application to understanding the neural basis of emotion. , 1995 .

[7]  J. Eccles.  The emotional brain. , 1980, Bulletin et memoires de l'Academie royale de medecine de Belgique.

[8]  Linda Mealey,et al.  Enhanced memory for faces of cheaters , 1996 .

[9]  N. Frijda,et al.  Relations among emotion, appraisal, and emotional action readiness , 1989 .

[10]  R. Adolphs,et al.  Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala , 1994, Nature.

[11]  Hanna Damasio,et al.  Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[12]  D. Franks.  Friday's Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human Mind , 1998 .

[13]  K. Scherer.  Emotion as a multicomponent process: A model and some cross-cultural data. , 1984 .

[14]  J. Hollerman,et al.  Reward processing in primate orbitofrontal cortex and basal ganglia. , 2000, Cerebral cortex.

[15]  H. Klüver,et al.  PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF FUNCTIONS OF THE TEMPORAL LOBES IN MONKEYS , 1939 .

[16]  J. Schumann.  A neurobiological basis for decision making in language pragmatics , 1999 .

[17]  E. Stern,et al.  Linguistic threat activates the human amygdala. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[18]  J L McGaugh,et al.  Amygdala activity at encoding correlated with long-term, free recall of emotional information. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[19]  K. Berridge,et al.  What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? , 1998, Brain Research Reviews.

[20]  A. Young,et al.  Face processing impairments after amygdalotomy. , 1997, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[21]  K. Scherer.  Criteria for emotion-antecedent appraisal: A review. , 1988 .

[22]  R. Adolphs,et al.  Impaired declarative memory for emotional material following bilateral amygdala damage in humans. , 1997, Learning & memory.

[23]  M. Posner.  The Brain and Emotion , 1999, Nature Medicine.

[24]  John P. Aggleton,et al.  The amygdala: Neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory, and mental dysfunction. , 1992 .

[25]  E. Rolls.  The orbitofrontal cortex and reward. , 2000, Cerebral cortex.

[26]  M. Bradley,et al.  Remembering pictures: pleasure and arousal in memory. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[27]  S. Ikemoto,et al.  The role of nucleus accumbens dopamine in motivated behavior: a unifying interpretation with special reference to reward-seeking , 1999, Brain Research Reviews.

[28]  Daniel Tranel,et al.  Preferences for Visual Stimuli Following Amygdala Damage , 1999, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[29]  A. Damasio,et al.  Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. , 2000, Cerebral cortex.

[30]  K. Scherer,et al.  The Relationship of Emotion to Cognition: A Functional Approach to a Semantic Controversy , 1987 .

[31]  R. Adolphs,et al.  The human amygdala in social judgment , 1998, Nature.

[32]  R. C. Gardner.  Social psychology and second language learning : the role of attitudes and motivation , 1985 .

[33]  Andrew Ortony,et al.  The Cognitive Structure of Emotions , 1988 .

[34]  N. Frijda.  Emotion, cognitive structure and action tendency , 1987 .

[35]  T. Robbins,et al.  Neurobehavioural mechanisms of reward and motivation , 1996, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.