The Distinctive Effects Of Chinese Conceptual Feature During Semantic Processing

Semantic is a study of meaning of the words. In psychology, semantic memory refers to long-term stores of meaning, understanding and other concepts-based knowledge unrelated to specific experiences. Most researchers agree which the current view that concept includes different types of features (such as distinctive features and shared features), and these concepts are connected with corresponding sets of features with each other. A semantic network which is a complex network represents semantic relations among these concepts and features.A semantic processing issue is about how concepts and features are represented and accessed in semantic memory. To date a number of theories of semantic structure and semantic processing have been proposed as alternatives. Such as, hierarchical network theory, the conceptual structure account, and connectionist attractor network. Although significant progress has been made in the current research of semantic processing, it has some inconsistencies among the results of these by now because of the complexity of language.Many studies using eye movements to investigate cognitive processes have appeared over the past 40 years, such as reading, typing, visual search, and scene perception. Eye movement data have proven to be extremely useful in the study of many topics related to cognitive processing. Eye movement research may be the best on-line measure of moment-to-moment cognitive processes.So two experiments was designed to investigate our goal in this study. The two experiments that used reaction time paradigm and eye movement research technique were designed to determine the distinctive effects of Chinese conceptual feature during semantic processing. Eighty Henan University undergraduates participated in this study.In experiment 1, we investigated whether distinctive features are activated quickly than shared features in Chinese concept during semantic computations by manipulating the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the presentation of the concept and the target feature. A 2×2×2 mixed design was adopted, with concept domain (living vs. nonliving thing), the type of feature (distinctive vs. shared feature), and SOA (300, 1200ms) as the independent variables. The dependent measures were verification latency and error rate.In experiment 2, although the objective of the experiment is the same as that in experiment 1, the eye movements of each participant were recorded while they read concept and feature by using ASL 504 eyetracker. The experiment design and the independent variables is also the same as Experiment 1. The dependent variables are eye movement's index which includes fixation count and fixation duration in the areas of interest.The result shows:in Chinese concepts, 1)the distinctive effects of reaction time for living things was significant at all SOAs, and 2)the distinctive effects is more prominent at the longer SOAs,and 3)There is the distinctive effects among eye movements, and the effects for living things was significant at all SOAs.