| A majority of traditional language comprehension models are on the basis of classical cognition theory, which holds that linguistic meaning is originated from amodal, abstract, and arbitrary symbols(AAA symbols) combined by syntactic rules, and hence language comprehension only involves the activation and integration of discrete and abstract building blocks of meaning. However, along with the emergence of embodied cognition theory, some scholars turn to explore the language comprehension models which emphasize the origin of linguistic meaning, one of which is Indexical Hypothesis(IH) proposed by the prominent linguist Glenberg(1999). “Affordance derivation” is one of the major concepts in his IH, denoting that when a word or a phrase is indexed to its reference, comprehenders tend to derive the appropriate affordance from the reference in order to completely understand the discourse.Glenberg and his colleagues abroad launch a series of related studies on IH. At home, Lu Zhongyi(2009) investigates the information-organizational function and the derivational mode of affordance for undergraduates during comprehension of Chinese. In addition, Jing Meng and Zhao Sisi(2014) conduct a behavioral experiment on the psychological reality of affordance derivation for proficient bilinguals in their comprehension of English and Chinese text. However, none of these researches provide the electrophysiological evidence of affordance derivation in the text comprehension.In order to carry out an in-depth exploration of affordance derivation, this paper tends to examine the psychological reality of affordance derivation based on Jiang and Zhao’s study, using reaction time(RT) and ERPs measurement to determine: Is there any electrophysiological evidence to support the hypothesis that affordance derivation is psychologically real for the Chinese EFL learners in English discourse comprehension?The present study is a one-factor within-subjects design with two levels(types of discourse: affordance-derivational discourse and affordance-nonderivational discourse). It uses both RT and ERPs as indexes and consists of two experiments. Primarily, the task under control condition is fulfilled, which presents the probe words one by one for subjects to judge whether the probe words are real words or non-words. In the formal experiment, which is conducted a week later, subjects are asked to first fully comprehend a discourse combined by a paragraph and a critical sentence, then complete the lexical decision task, and at last determine whether the meaning of an assertive sentence is consistent with the foregoing discourse. According to the critical words in the critical sentences, formal experiment is conducted under two conditions: affordance-derivational condition and affordance-nonderivational condition. Both two experiments record the RT and ERPs as subjects are performing the lexical decision task. The experiment is programmed by using the software E-prime1.1 and the ERPs results are collected, recorded and off-line analyzed by the software Neuroscan4.5. Afterwards, the outcomes are analyzed by statistic software SPSS16.0.The results of the current study demonstrate that:(1) The reaction time of the probe words in the control condition is significantlyshorter than that in the formal experiment condition [t 8(19)=-2.57,p=0.022<0.05; t(19) =-3.35, p=0.005<0.05]. While in the formalexperiment, the speed of probe words judgment in theaffordance-derivational condition is remarkably faster than that in theaffordance-nonderivational condition [t(19) =-2.83, p=0.013<0.05]. Thisbehavioral data is consistent with the results obtained by Jiang Meng andZhao Sisi(2014), which indicates that the acceleration of judgment taskresults from the successful derivation of affordances from the critical words,and affordance derivation is psychologically real for Chinese EFL learnersin English discourse comprehension.(2) ERPs data reveals that in the time window between 230 and 550 ms, themean amplitude of negativities elicited by the probe words in theaffordance-derivational condition is noticeably larger than that in theaffordance-nonderivational condition(p=.018<.05). This N400-likenegativity is supposed to be associated with the activation of thelexical-semantic network and the lexical multimodal information. Becauseparticipants derive the affordance in the affordance-derivational condition,when judging the probe words, they activate a more extensive semanticnetwork and more multimode information of the probe words. Therefore, itreflexes the facilitating effect produced by the successful derivation ofaffordance in the affordance-derivational condition. The result shows thatthere is ERPs evidence to prove that affordance derivation ispsychologically real for EFL learners in English discourse comprehension.In summary, both behavioral and ERPs data testify the psychological reality of affordance derivation for EFL learners in the comprehension of English discourse. |
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