UC Riverside

Language serves an important role in cognition and impacts abilities such as cognitive control, memory, and emotion. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that experience with two languages may affect individuals’ abilities in these different domains. While many studies have looked at how bilingualism relates to cognition and emotion separately, this study is the first of its kind to study bilingual language use in different affective contexts and examine how spontaneous speech relates to cognitive control and emotion regulation. Studies on emotion regulation and bilingualism have often ignored heritage speakers, despite having a unique bilingual experience. This dissertation aimed to understand whether heritage speakers perceived emotional differences between their two languages, and if so, examine how differences manifest in spontaneous speech. The first aim of this study was to examine how individual differences in cognition and emotion regulation might account for bilingual language use. The second aim was to examine the relationship between cognition and emotion regulation in a bilingual population. This is one of few studies to specifically study heritage bilinguals, individuals who grew up speaking a home language that is not a majority language in the society at large but who typically became dominant speakers of the majority language. Fifty female heritage bilinguals from the University of California, Riverside participated in this study. Participants completed a series of emotion regulation questionnaires, cognitive control tasks (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Navon shape task, color/shape task), and affective conversations (positive, negative, or neutral) with a confederate. The affective conversations and self-report data replicate some previous findings, such that the heritage bilinguals revealed a preference for using English while discussing negative life events. Although many participants indicated that Spanish was perceived to be the more “emotional” language, they identified English as their preferred language for emotional expression. As for cognitive control and emotion regulation, the data suggest that domain-general flexibility might account for code-switching frequency. Performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; a task that measures cognitive flexibility) and scores from the Flexible Regulation of Emotion Expression (FREE) scale were associated with code-switching frequency. Thus, bilinguals who code-switch frequency also show evidence of flexibility in the domains of cognition and emotion regulation.