具身认知观对语言理解的新诠释——心理模拟:语言理解的一种手段

具身认知观(Embodied Cognition)试图对心-身-世界之间的交互方式给予系统的理论说明,主张:"认知是一种高度具身的、情景化的活动"(Micheal L.Anderson,2004);认知是从身体与环境的相互作用中产生的,依赖于某种类型的经验。从具身认知观来看,心理模拟是语言理解的一种手段,通过再入情景(re-situating)来实现。本文根据上述逻辑考察了词、句、语篇不同信息加工层面的实验研究进展,证实了人们在语言加工过程中感知、肌肉运动以及其他的经验印痕被激活,支持了语言理解是运动感觉以及其他相关经验的心理模拟过程。这种语言理解的心理模拟需要人们再入情景,与已有的听读说写的语言经验发生共鸣,从而为语言理解提供了新的诠释,丰富和发展了认知语言学的理论与实践。     

Social eye gaze modulates processing of speech and co-speech gesture

In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech + gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker’s preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients’ speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker’s message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension.     

左右半球在语篇理解中的协同作用

通过2例一侧颞叶损伤患者研究了一侧颞叶损伤及两侧半球的协同作用对语篇理解的影响,并探讨了发生此种影响的可能机制。结果表明一侧颞叶的损伤将导致患者语篇水平的理解障碍及语言推理能力的下降;提示语篇理解需双侧半球的协同作用,而推理能力下降可能是引发语篇理解障碍的原因之一。     

语篇理解中背景信息的激活: 情景限制的共振过程

该研究采用双人物线索语篇材料,对语篇理解中背景信息激活过程的共振模型与剧景模型进行检验。实验一发现,如果主角和配角一直同时在故事情景中成为主线索,则目标句中主角的行为可以激活那些经过屏蔽的、与这一行为相关的配角特征。在实验二中,配角只是在特征描述段落中出现,而后通过适当的描述使其在故事情景中消失,使主角成为故事的主线索,结果发现,此时目标句中主角的行为并不会激活经过屏蔽的配角的特征描述。这些结果表明,背景信息的激活虽然具有共振的特点,但共振并不是无范围限制的,而是一种情景限制下的共振。     

The extent of working memory deficits associated with Williams syndrome: exploration of verbal and spatial domains and executively controlled processes

The present study investigated verbal and spatial working memory (WM) functioning in individuals with the neuro-developmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) using WM component tasks. While there is strong evidence of WM impairments in WS, previous research has focused on short-term memory and has neglected assessment of executive components of WM. There is a particular lack of consensus concerning the profile of verbal WM functioning in WS. Here, WS participants were compared to typically developing participants matched for (1) verbal ability and (2) spatial ability (N = 14 in each of the 3 groups). Individuals with WS were impaired on verbal WM tasks, both those involving short-term maintenance of information and executive manipulation, in comparison to verbal-matched controls. Surprisingly, individuals with WS were not impaired on a spatial task assessing short-term maintenance of information in memory (remembering spatial locations) compared to spatial-matched controls. They were, however, impaired on a spatial executive WM task requiring the manipulation of spatial information in memory. The present study suggests that individuals with WS show WM impairments that extend to both verbal and spatial domains, although spatial deficits are selective to executive aspects of WM function.     

Refractoriness and the healthy brain: A behavioural study on semantic access

While many behavioural studies on refractory phenomena in lexical/semantic access have focused on the mechanisms involved in the oral production of names, comprehension tasks have been almost exclusively used in neuropsychological studies on brain damaged patients. We report the results of two experiments on healthy participants conducted by means of speeded word to picture matching tasks. They assess the effects of the same variables examined in the study of refractory access dysphasic patients: semantic distance and word frequency (experiment 1) and presentation rate and serial position effects (experiment 2). Semantic access patients usually show little effect of word frequency but a large semantic distance effect. However, critical in characterising the syndrome as ‘refractory’, effects of presentation rate and serial position should also be present. The experiments involved the use of a deadline response procedure. The critical manipulation was the absence of a Response Stimulus Interval (RSI) in the fast presentation rate conditions; slower presentation rates involved 1 s RSI. With these manipulations the typical behavioural pattern of performance provided by semantic access dysphasic patients was reproduced. Semantic distance effects were more powerful than word frequency effects (experiment1). Presentation rate effects were found and, most important for a “refractory” account of the effects, a serial position effect was obtained (experiment 2). These results provide the first evidence of such a broad range of refractory effects at the same time in comprehension tasks in healthy subjects and support a purely semantic account for the locus of refractoriness. Moreover, error analysis showed a predominance of perseverative errors with subsequent representations of the same target, supporting a failure of cognitive control mechanisms as the cause of refractory behaviour. The findings are discussed in the light of current models of lexical and semantic processing.     

量词肯定句和否定句的理解

本研究试图探索人们对舍有“所有”、“每一个”、“有一些”等量词的肯定句、否定句和双重否定句的理解。要求成人被试尽快判断呈现在计算机屏幕上的句子和哪一幅图画的内容相符。结果表明,影响反应时的因素为(1)句子的表层结构和它的底层意义的一致程度;(2)句子的意义和从图画中得出的命题的一致程度;(3)句子中使用的量词。结果还表明,否定句的判断时间不一定全都比肯定句的长。     

TEACHING IDIOM COMPREHENSION TO CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

This study examined the effectiveness of a training program designed to teach children with mild mental retardation the meaning of 12 idiomatic phrases, such as “to hit the sack.” Four 9-year-old children participated in the training. A multiple baseline design across subjects and across three sets of idioms was implemented. Training consisted of presenting both literal and idiomatic contexts in the form of story narratives, and asking the children to explain the outcome of the story and to select one picture from an array of four that represented the outcome. All children demonstrated learning, although 1 child required review procedures to facilitate maintenance. Children were able to generalize their receptive learning to an expressive task with varying levels of success. All children demonstrated an ability to understand the learned idioms when presented in unfamiliar contexts.     

More is more: The relationship between vocabulary size and word extension

This study experimentally tested the relationship between children’s lexicon size and their ability to learn new words within the domain of color. We manipulated the size of 25 20-month-olds’ color lexicons by training them with two, four, or six different color words over the course of eight training sessions. We subsequently tested children’s ability to extend new color words to new instances. We found that training with a broader number of color words led to increased extension of new words. The results suggest that children’s learning history predicts their ability to learn new words within domains.     

Processing of the Korean Eojoel Ambiguity

Korean writing is a syllabary where spaces occur between phrases rather than between words. This characteristic of Korean allows different types of information in Korean sentences to be dissociated in ways that are not possible in the languages that have been the focus of most psycholinguistic research, thereby providing new opportunities to investigate mechanisms of ambiguity resolution during sentence comprehension. In experiments using eye-tracking and self-paced reading, we examined how readers resolve the Eojoel ambiguity, where the grouping of syllables is ambiguous with respect to whether a phrase-final syllable is a case marker or a part of a word. This Eojoel ambiguity offers an opportunity to test how relative frequency of the lexical entries and complexity of morphological decomposition affect ambiguity resolution. Overall, the results of the experiments presented here showed that readers noticed and processed the Eojoel ambiguity very rapidly using information about the relative frequency of alternative interpretations, while the complexity of the morphological decomposition had little effect. These results are discussed in terms of constraint-based accounts (MacDonald et al. Psychol Rev 101:676–703, 1994) of ambiguity resolution.