A Comparative Study Of Chinese EFL Learners' Affordance Derivation Efficiency In Chinese And English Discourse Comprehension

Different from the Classical Cognition Theory,the Embodied Cognition Theory believes that the language comprehension is based on the human body and experience with the outside world.This study adopts the recent language comprehension model of embodied cognition—Indexical Hypothesis.With the help of ERPs and E-prime techniques,applying the English and Chinese discourse,this research investigates the following question: Is there any difference in affordance derivation between advanced Chinese EFL Learner' s comprehension of Chinese discourse and English discourse?The research adopts a 2(discourse type: affordance-derivational discourse and affordance-nonderivational discourse)× 2(context type: English context and Chinese context)within-subject design.Sixteen postgraduates majoring in English are selected as subjects.The research includes two experiments.In each experiment,at first,subjects are required to read and comprehend a discourse including a paragraph and a critical sentence,and then complete the lexical decision task,finally,determine if the meaning of an assertive sentence is in accordance with the previous discourse.Both the RT and ERPs data are recorded when subjects perform the lexical decision task.Besides,the experiment is programmed by E-prime 2.0,and the ERPs results are collected,recorded and off-line analyzed by Neuroscan4.5.At last the results are analyzed by statistic software SPSS16.0.The results are presented as follows:(1)In term of the behavioral data,in AD discourse,Chinese EFL learners spend less time on judging the probe words of Chinese context(M Chinese/AD=929.7ms)than English context(M English/AD=1087.6ms),the difference between the RT is significant(t AD/Chinese&English= 1.63,p=0.041).However,in ADN discourse,the difference is not significant even though subjects still spending less time on responding to probe words of Chinese context(MChinese/AND=1005.5ms,M English/ADN=1184.3ms,t AND/Chinese&English= 1.88,p=0.22).In this case,there is a difference in efficiency of affordance derivation between advance Chinese EFL learners' comprehension of Chinese discourse and English discourse,leading the native language(NL)superiority effect.(2)According to the ERPs data,under AD condition,the probe words of English context(MA English=-0.551)elicits a bigger negative amplitude than that of Chinese context(MA Chinese=0.346)over 280–550 ms,and the difference is significant(t AD/Chinese&English=2.31,p=0.041);However,under ADN condition,the difference is significant(t ADN/Chinese& English=5.103,p=0.007)over 280-550 ms,and the mean amplitude is bigger when Chinese EFL learners process probe words of Chinese context(MA Chinese =-0.741,MA English=0.467),which still is in accordance with behavioral results and displays the native language(NL)superiority effect.In a word,both behavioral and ERPs data shows that there is a difference in affordance derivation between advanced Chinese EFL learners' comprehension of Chinese discourse and English Discourse,which may be caused by the code switching effect.