Study Of The Relationship Between Suppression And Working Memory Capacity In Foreign Language Reading

In language processing, practical experience has proved that in many aspects of language understanding, suppression, also called inhibition, plays an important role. The current research of suppression in language comprehension is wide in scope, including not only such forms and levels of language comprehension as vocabulary, syntax, discourse and rhetoric of language, but also the individual differences in inhibition and its root causes. Compared with the abundant empirical studies abroad, domestic research is much common in psychology; only a very small number of researchers investigated the inhibition mechanism in the field of second language teaching application. These studies analyzed the relations among inhibitory mechanism of language comprehension and other variables such as language proficiency, mental representation, etc., which were theoretical essentially and had little actual data analysis. In addition, it is important to determine whether any weaknesses in foreign language comprehension could be explained by weakness in working memory. Therefore, based on the theories of Structure Building Framework and Inhibition and Contents of Working Memory, this study proposes the following research questions: 1) What differences do the subjects of different levels of foreign language reading ability have in the efficiency and the pattern of suppression? 2) Are there differences in working memory capacity of learners of different levels of foreign language reading ability? 3) Is the suppression efficiency in foreign language reading correlates to the working memory capacity?Based on the theories of Structure Building Framework and Inhibition and Contents of Working Memory, a series of tests are carried out including: EFL reading test, English working memory span task and self-paced moving window reading task. Correlations among the data are analyzed so as to investigate the internal relation between inhibition mechanism and working memory in foreign language reading comprehension. Sixty non-English major subjects are selected from Chong Qing University and are divided into two groups according to their performance in the EFL reading test: the high level group and the low level group. Two groups are respectively conducted the English working memory span task and self-paced moving window reading task. The results show that: inhibition mechanism also exists in foreign language reading comprehension, reflecting that the inhibition mechanism as a general cognitive mechanism has a cross-linguistic facts. The study also finds that the high level group score higher than low level group in the working memory span test and performed better than low-level group in the inhibition mechanism task. Individuals of broader working memory capacity have a better inhibitory capacity than that of the weaker individuals, which can further affect the efficiency of foreign language reading comprehension. Therefore the study comes to the conclusion that: inhibitory mechanisms have a strong dependence on working memory capacity.Finally, teaching implications are proposed with the hope of deepening people's understanding in this area and benefiting the teaching and learning of English.