An ERPs Approach To The Semantic Embodiment Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Comprehension Of English Emotional Words

Embodied cognition is a fundamental part of the second generation cognitive science. Embodied cognition theory argues that the advanced cognitive activities of human is grounded in their body experience. As a complex psychological cognitive activity, language cognition is also a highly embodied activity, and linguistic meaning originally derives from bodily experience. Emotion is an important part of human experience and the most central and common aspect in human experience. There are emotional words in nearly all languages, used for expressing attitude towards things in the external world. For a long time, researches on emotional words have focused on the semantic classification of emotional words, and lacked for the exploration on the mechanism of emotional words comprehension. Therefore, the current study adopts the event-related potential technique to explore the semantic embodiment in emotional words comprehension. The following questions are to be addressed:(1)Does semantic embodiment have psychological reality in Chinese EFL learners’ comprehension of English emotional words?(2) If semantic embodiment has psychological reality in Chinese EFL learners’ comprehension of English emotional words, is there any difference between their comprehension of English and Chinese emotional words?Based on ERPs techniques, eighteen Chinese EFL learners participated in the experiments of this study. The study adopts a 3( affective priming sound) ×3( emotional target word) × 2( language type) within-participant design. In the experiments, emotional sounds of positive, neutral and negative valence are used as priming stimuli and emotional words of positive, neutral and negative valence are used as target words. The subjects are required to do the semantic categorization tasks, namely judging the emotional valence of the target words. Later, ERPs data of emotional words comprehension are analysed. In order to explore the difference of semantic embodiment of Chinese EFL learners’ comprehension of English emotional words and Chinese emotional words, the equivalent Chinese experiment is conducted. After the experiments, by comparing the ERPs data of component N100 and P200, which are related to emotional perception and the attention allocation respectively, the impact of affective arousal conditions on the comprehension of emotional words is explored, and the explanation is made in terms of perceptual symbol theory.The experiments were conducted in the key lab of cognitive neuroscience and foreign language learning in Sichuan International Studies University. The experimental procedure was made in application of the software E-prime and the results were collected and recorded by the software Neuroscan4.5. Then, the ERPs data were processed by off-line analysis and the outcomes were treated by the statistic software SPSS19.0. The results can be concluded as follows:(1) According to the ERPs data of component P200 during subjects’ comprehension of English emotional words, the P200 amplitude is stonger in condition that the emotional value of affective arousals is congruent with the value of the emotional target words, indicating that the congruency of emotional value facilitated subjects’ comprehension of English emotional words, thus proving that semantic embodiment has psychological reality in Chinese EFL learners’ comprehension of English emotional words. According to the perceptual symbol theory, perception and cognition share common neural systems and function simultaneously in the same mechanisms and con not be divorced. The affective arousals preactivate specific emotional experience for the subjects, thus facilitating the subjects’ comprehension of the same valued emotional words, providing electrophysiological evidence for semantic embodiment.(2) By comparing the ERPs data of component P200 in the English experiment and Chinese experiment, we find that the facilitative effect of emotional valence congruency is reflected in more brain regions when the subjects comprehend English emotional words. The difference indicates that Chinese EFL learners’ mastery of English emotional words has not reached the degree of their mastery of Chinese emotional words. Therefore, there is “mother tongue advantage” of the semantic embodiment in Chinese EFL learners’ emotional words comprehension, reflecting their English emotional words are learned in reference to the equivalent Chinese emotional words.(3) Besides, the results of ERPs component N100 shows that the presentation of negative arousals caused larger N100 amplitude than positive arousals, both for the positive target words and for the negative target words in both Chinese and English experiments. This suggests that the negative sound arousals caused difficulty for the subjects to perceive the emotional information from the target words.