Concreteness Effect Of Chinese Two-character Words Research

The present study examined the concreteness effect of Chinese word with the event-related potential(ERP)measures.We used Chinese two – character word as experimental materials during a lexical decision tasks.The study involved two parts: concreteness effect under different word frequency: evidence from Chinese;to rationally explain the theory of concreteness effect: from the experiment to examine the rational of dual-coding theory.The first part manipulated lexical type and word frequency with lexical decision task to examine the expression of concreteness effect under different word frequency(high frequency/ mid-frequency/ high frequency).Behavior result found concreteness effect that word type and word frequency in the reaction and right indicators had the significantly main effect.The interaction between word type and word frequency showed marginally significant.The result from ERP data found that N400 concreteness effect.There is a main effect of concreteness showing that the amplitude of N400 for concrete word was more negative than that for abstract words.The N400 advantage for concrete words was greater over the right hemisphere than the left.And the difference of LPC only found in hemisphere.The second experiment manipulated priming type and word type to examine the rational of dual-coding theory.Behavior result found concreteness effect that word type and priming type in the reaction and right indicators had the significantly main effect.The interaction between word type and priming type was not significant.The result from ERP data didn’t find N400 concreteness effect.The concreteness effect of N400 was not significant.And there was no different of hemisphere.Basing on the study result,some inclusions could be come to:(1)Chinese two-character word frequency and word type might be two related factors in single context.In other words,word property affected the processing of concreteness effect.(2)There was concreteness effect in the Chinese single context,and in the low-frequency word there must be the concreteness effect.(3)The different priming condition(related-priming/unrelated-priming/symbol-priming)can’t eliminate concreteness effect,that is to say dual-coding theory can’t accurately predict concreteness effect from behavioral and ERP.