Cognitive Mechanism Research Of Chinese Idioms Identification

Chinese idiom is a kind of non-literal language, in the form of "four words" as it’s fundamental. Chinese idiom is the phrase that people used to use for a long time, in the form of concise and penetrating, stereotyped phrases or short sentences. Chinese idiom has the characteristics offixed structure, meaning integrity, classical language and written language. Factors influencing the idiom cognitive factors include word frequency, familiarity, Literality and so on. Mental image is also one of the factors which have been rarely got research. Mental image is the reflection of the thing which we have experienced in the past and beyond our sight now. Mental image has the feature of intuitive vivid and general. It concludes visual image and auditory image. We suppose that high visual imaging idioms activate speech coding system and image coding system at the same time, but the low visual imaging idioms only activate speech coding system when they are processing. So the high visual imaging idioms have fast processing speed,and the same time the high visual imaging idioms is easier to be recognized.This study through three experiments to examine processing cognitive mechanism that influence idioms processed. Experiment1using implicit task mixed idioms and non-idioms and then let the participants to judge the present four words are idioms or non-idioms. Experiment2using explicit task let the participants to judge the present idioms are high visual image or low visual image. Experiment3explores the cognitive mechanism by using the ERP technology. In three experimental conditions, the high visual imaging idioms are shorter reaction time than low visual imaging idiom At the same time, the experiment3also found that idioms and non-idioms are all triggered N200(170-230ms), and there were no significant differences between their amplitude Compared with the idiom, the non-idiom has triggered more negative N400(350-450ms) and more positive LPC (420-600ms), and there were significant difference between the idioms and non-idioms. Compared with high visual imaging idioms, low visual imaging idioms triggered enhancement N400(350-450ms) and LPC (420-600ms). These results can be explained by the Dual Coding Theory. High visual imaging idioms has two kind of coding way which are image coding and speech coding, which enables the participants quickly distinguish from the four words. While low visual imaging idioms has only speech coding way, make its processing needs more cognitive resources and more effort than high visual imaging idioms. So low visual imaging idioms have recognition time lengthen, cause increase of N400and LPC. Through this experiment found that mental image is also the important factors influencing the idioms processing.