Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect In EFL Motor Processing

Traditional Amodal Theory thinks that, conceptual meaning is stored in our memory as abstract, amodal, and arbitrary symbols combined with syntactic rules. On the contrary, Embodied Language Comprehension Theory insists that language is grounded in bodily activity, meaning is grounded in sensory motor system in modality. In the process of language comprehension, mental simulation of the past experience of sensory motor activity is activated. Previous studies mainly focused on action simulation. However, few studies took second language learners processing target language as the entry point.This study regards whether second language learners triggered Action-Sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) during sentence comprehension as research objective. The English simple sentences including concrete and abstract verbs are taken as stimuli. Reaction time and accuracy rate of the participants were collected as the experimental data. Two group of students with different English competence participated in the study. The ACE shows that, when the direction indicated in the sentence is compatible with the participant’s response direction, the response time is longer than that in the incompatible condition. The present study analyzed the reaction time of two groups while processing concrete and abstract verb sentences, explored the difference between processing concrete verb and abstract verb as well as compared the difference between the two groups of second language learners.The 120 experimental stimuli include 40.concrete verb sentences,20 abstract verb sentences, and 60 filler stimuli.41 English major postgraduate students and 43 non-English major students participated in the experiment. The experiment was controlled by E-prime, reaction time and accuracy rate were inputted to SPSS for data analysis. The results indicated that:1) While processing concrete-verb sentences, both groups triggered ACE. That is to say, in the sensible judgment task, the response time of the compatible condition is longer than that of incompatible condition. The results reflect that while second language learners process concrete actions, mental simulation of the directional representation in the sentence is activated.2) There is no significant ACE in processing abstract-verb sentences. This result reflects that second language learners can not activate the simulation of the directional representation in the abstract sentences as the native speakers do.3) Comparing the reaction time and accuracy under the compatible situation of concrete verb processing, we found that high competence group responded faster with a higher accuracy. This means the higher the second language competence is, the faster the comprehension of the target language is.4) Since second language learners did not activate the mental simulation while processing simple sentences including abstract verbs, the finding shows the difficulty for second language learners in processing abstract actions. In second language comprehension, concrete action is understood easily. However, due to the fact that the abstract action possesses more emotional and linguistic features, it is harder to process.In a word, the present study shows that mental simulation is activated while second language learner with certain language competence understanding sentences. In second language comprehension, mental simulation would be facilitated with a higher language competence.