题  目：Bilingual Processes of Text Comprehension: An event-related potentials (ERPs) investigation  

       （双语者在文本阅读过程中的机制：来自ERP实验的研究）

主讲人：杨金龙博士（香港中文大学）

时  间：2015年11月17日（周二）下午5：10－6：10

地  点：心理学院201会议室

Abstract

Psycholinguistic studies that examine the effect of bilingual proficiency have largely focused on the lexical, semantic and syntactic processing whereas those at the text level have received relatively little attention (Tokowicz & Perfetti, 2005). We conducted an event-related potential (EPR) study to examine the proficiency effect on the bilingual (L2) processes of the three levels of text representation (i.e., lexical/conceptual (textbase)/situational, Kintsch, 1998) during the real-time processes of L2 text comprehension. Four-eight English as the second language learners (L2/ESL: high vs. low proficiency, 24 each), read two-sentences passages in English where the “referent-matching” relation of the target word (“The explosion..”), to the text matches with the three levels of text representation: A surface-level match as in “…exploded... The explosion…”; a textbase match as in “…blew up... The explosion…”; and a situation-model match as in “…bomb…dropped. The explosion…”. Additionally, a non-sensible baseline “…bomb was stored safely… The explosion…” was used to compare the ease of integration processing among conditions. We analyzed the N400 (250-500ms post-target onset) and late positivity component (LPC, 500-700ms) to assess the proficiency effect on the semantic integration (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980) and the mental-model construction processes (Burkhardt, 2007; Brouwer, et al., 2012) respectively. The results indicate robust proficiency effect when processing textbase match: the amplitude of both N400 and LPC was reduced for high-proficient L2/ESL while enhanced for low-proficient L2/ESL. No reliable proficiency effect was observed when integrating the target word with the text relied on a surface-match and a demanding conceptual processing (i.e., inference-drawing when processing the situation match): both groups showed reduced N400 while enhanced LPC effect. The results, overall, underline the importance of the L2 semantic/conceptual processing in modulating the ease of both meaning integration and mental-model construction processes during L2 text comprehension; and also suggest the high resource constraints in bilinguals’ mental-model construction processes due to their non-native lexico-semantic processing (as compared to monolinguals, Burkhardt, 2007; Yang, et al., 2007).

主讲人简介

杨金龙教授，于2000年在美国北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校获得心理学博士学位，曾先后在美国莱斯大学，卡耐基梅龙大学，匹兹堡大学，香港大学，香港城市大学从事研究和教学工作。现为香港中文大学语言学系荣誉助理教授。杨金龙教授的研究方向为：阅读与语言的认知与神经机制，高层次语言加工的认知机制，双语学习的认知机制。杨教授主持多项香港重要的科研基金项目，目前已经在Cognition, JEP.LMC等国际权威期刊发表论文近20篇，参编6本学术著作。