A Comparative Study On Chinese EFL Learners' Processing Of Chinese And English Body-related Verbs From The Perspective Of Embodied Cognition

The embodied cognition theory holds that there is an interaction between language understanding and people's sensorimotor system.When processing action verbs or action-related contents,the corresponding language area and motor cortex in the brain will be activated.There are abundant researches related to body-related verbs.Foreign studies are mostly based on native speakers,while few scholars in China study it empirically from the perspective of embodied cognition.As a result,based on previous researches,this study focuses on the processing of Chinese and English body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners in terms of the embodied cognition,and the specific research questions are as follows:(1)Is there an embodiment effect in the processing of Chinese body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners?(2)Is there an embodiment effect in the processing of English body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners?(3)Is there any difference in the processing of Chinese and English body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners?There are two experiments in the present study.Experiment One is a Chinese body-related verb processing experiment with a 3(word type: hand verb,foot verb and abstract verb)× 2(response effector hand and foot)mixed design.The experimental materials are composed of 30 Chinese hand verbs(concrete verb),30 Chinese foot verbs(concrete verb),30 Chinese abstract verbs,and 90 corresponding Chinese pseudowords.Thirty-two English-major graduate students from SISU(Sichuan International Studies University)participate in the experiment.They are randomly and equally divided into two groups.The first group are required to finish the false or true lexical decision task with hand,and the other are required to finish with foot.The reaction time and ERPs data for target verbs are recorded.Experiment Two is an English body-related verb processing experiment with a 3(word type: hand verb,foot verb and abstract verb)× 2(response effector: hand and foot)mixed design.The experimental materials are composed of 30 English hand verbs(concrete verb),30 English foot verbs(concrete verb),30 English abstract verbs,and 90 corresponding English pseudowords.Participants and experiment task in Experiment Two is the same with Experiment One.The two experiments were carried out in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning at Sichuan International Studies University.The program was programmed by E-prime software and the ERPs data was collected and analyzed by the software of Neuroscan 4.5.Through statistical analysis of paired-samples t-test,independent-samples t-test,two-way repeated measures ANOVA,three-way repeated measures ANOVA and simple effect analysis,the results were as follows:(1)The behavioral data of Experiment One shows that there is a significant difference of reaction time when participants respond with hand(F = 8.739,p =.006 <.05),with hand verbs faster than foot verbs;there is also a significant difference of reaction time when participants respond with foot(F = 7.194,p =.012 <.05),with foot verbs faster than hand verbs.This congruency effect between word type and response effector indicates that there is an embodiment effect in the processing of Chinese body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners.(2)The behavioral data of Experiment Two displays that hand verbs are slightly faster than foot verbs when participants respond with hand,but this difference does not reach significance(F =.900,p =.350 >.05);there is a significant difference of reaction time when participants respond with foot(F = 6.264,p =.018 <.05),with foot verbs faster than hand verbs,which demonstrates that there is also an embodiment effect in the processing of English body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners.(3)The ERPs data of Experiment One shows that participants' processing of Chinese body-related verbs under both hand and foot response conditions elicits three obvious ERPs components,namely,N100,P200 and N400.The repeated measures ANOVA of these three components shows that there is neither the interaction effect between verb type and response effector,nor the main effect of verb type and response effector(all p >.05),which can be explained that participants are too familiar with their mother tongue and the experiment requires an implicit semantic access.(4)The ERPs data of Experiment Two shows that participants' processing of English body-related verbs under both hand and foot response conditions also elicits three obvious ERPs N100,P200 and N400.Repeated measures ANOVA of P200 and N400 shows that the main effect of response effector is significant(all p <.05).A further independent-samples t-test shows that the amplitude and average amplitude of participants' hand responses are greater than those of foot responses(all p <.05).Moreover the analysis of N400 also shows a significant main effect of word type(p =.034 <.05),and the paired-samples t-test suggests that the average amplitude of participants' processing of hand verb is greater than foot verb(p =.031 <.05).However,the repeated measures ANOVA does not find interaction effect between word type and response effector.These results may due to that participants are not familiar enough with English and the experiment requires an implicit semantic access.In conclusion,there is a congruency effect between word type and response effector in the processing of Chinese and English body-related verbs,i.e.there is a facilitation effect when the response effector is consistent with the body part implied by a described verb.Though it is not supported by ERPs data,the results still show that there is an embodiment effect in the processing of Chinese and English body-related verbs by Chinese EFL learners,which is in line with the claim of the embodied cognition theory that motor system plays an important role.