A Comparative Study Of The Factors Affecting Chinese EFL Learners' Task-switching In English And Chinese Lexical Processing

Researches on task-switching have achieved lots of fruits at home and abroad.The research contents are mainly about the phenomenon of task-switching cost and the mechanism underneath switching,as well as the affecting factors such as working memory capacity and task setting.From the perspective of research method,behavioral experiments are mainly investigated,neuroimaging method is also involved.Few is about multiple factors by adopting ERPs technique.Based on the previous researches,this study aims to discuss whether lexical processing condition affects Chinese EFL learners' English and Chinese lexical processing,and whether priming task type and lexical processing language affect Chinese EFL learners' task-switching effect in English and Chinese lexical processing by adopting ERPs technique.The specific questions to be discussed are:(1)Does lexical processing condition affect Chinese EFL learners' English and Chinese lexical processing,namely does task-switching effect occur?(2)Does priming task type affect Chinese EFL learners' task-switching effect in English and Chinese lexical processing?(3)Does lexical processing language affect Chinese EFL learners' taskswitching effect in English and Chinese lexical processing?This study adopts a 3(lexical processing condition: no task-switching,word-word switching,picture-word switching)× 2(priming task type: semanticrelated,semantic-unrelated)× 2(lexical processing language: Chinese,English)within participant design.All the materials are randomly presented.23 English-major postgraduates who are Chinese natives in SISU are participated in this study.The experiment conduction is divided into two parts.Firstly subjects finish the probe words decision under no task-switching condition,then under English word to word or picture to word switching condition,namely an English word or a picture is presented,after which the probe word appears,requiring them to do the same probe word decision task as that of the first part.All the words or pictures in task one are semantic-related and semantic-unrelated to the probe words accordingly,and all the probe words are both Chinese and English.The experiment records subjects' ACC,RT and ERPs data when they do lexical decision respectively.The software E-Prime 2.0 is used for programming the experimental procedure,and the software Neuroscan 4.5 and Synaps 2 are for the experimental data collection.After the off-line analyses,the statistic software SPSS 16.0 is adopted.All the procedures are conducted in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning in SISU.The results are as follows:(1)From the behavioral data analysis,a conclusion can be drawn that during Chinese EFL learners' English and Chinese lexical processing there is task-switching effect.Significance exists under both word to word and picture to word switching conditions by comparing the data of task-switching and no task-switching,ps <.05;priming task type has an inconsistent impact on task-switching effect due to the RT comparison of SRLSE and SULSE(p =.004 <.05),so as to SRPSC and SUPSC(p =.038 <.05),while there is no difference in the comparison of SRLSC and SULSC,SRPSE and SUPSE,revealing that to some extent,priming task type have an impact on Chinese EFL learners' English and Chinese lexical processing.Moreover,for the factor of lexical processing language,significance exists under the both task-switching condition,ps <.05,indicating that lexical processing language affects Chinese EFL learners' task-switching in English and Chinese lexical processing.(2)The ERPs data reveals that the components of N100 and N400 are all elicited under different conditions.The amplitude and mean amplitude analysis of N400 show significance in the comparison of task-switching and no task-switching condition,ps <.05,and difference exists in the comparison of ESRSE,ESUSE and NTSE(p =.002 <.05),PSRSE,PSUSE and NTSE(p =.000 <.05),so as to the mean amplitude analysis of N100,proving the existence of task-switching effect in learners' English and Chinese lexicon processing.As to the priming task type,there is significant difference in the mean amplitude analysis of N100,and almost all the amplitude and mean amplitude analysis of N400,ps <.05,revealing that priming task type has an impact on task-switching effect.What's more,significance is also found in the latency,amplitude and mean amplitude analysis of N400 under different lexical processing language,ps <.05,meaning that it is also a factor that influencing task-switching effect,and difference exists between Chinese EFL learners' English and Chinese lexical processing.To sum up,there is task-switching effect in Chinese EFL learners' English and Chinese lexical processing;priming task type and lexical processing language do influence the task-switching effect in their English and Chinese lexical processing.