An Eye Movement Study Of The Embodiment Of Chinese EFL Learners' Comprehension Of Fictive Motion Expressions

In the book Toward A Cognitive Semantics?2000?,Leonard Talmy defined the cognitive pattern of a contradiction between the real degree and the real degree of the same object as“the Pattern of General Fictivity”,and based on this,he introduced the cognitive concept of“fictive motion”.As one important branch of motion expressions,Fictive Motion Expressions?hereinafter FMEs?refers to a kind of imaginative motion in people's mind,which uses a motion verb to describe the spatial relationship between two stationary objects.In recent years,the most studies on Fictive Motion Expressions mainly focused on its theoretical aspect and cross-linguistic studies.At abroad,though some scholars conducted empirical researches,their researches were limited to native English speakers,as well as mainly discussed whether there was a mental simulation when people were understanding the Fictive Motion Expressions,which lack relative researches from the embodied cognition perspective.Based on the frame of the cognitive theory of embodiment,this paper will discuss the semantic embodiment of Chinese EFL learners'understanding of FMEs by adopting an indirect priming paradigm of eye tracking technique.The research questions can be listed as the follows:?1?Under no priming conditions,are there any differences when the participants are comprehending the fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions??2?Under priming conditions,will some differences appear when the subjects are understanding the fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions??3?Compared with no priming conditions,will exist any differences between the comprehension of fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions with priming conditions?This study included two experiments,both of which were designed to be within the subjects.Experiment One took one factor and four levels?FMEs,NFMEs,referential FMEs,referential NFMEs?non-priming condition,and only the fictive motion sentences and non-fictive motion sentences were used as the experimental materials.Through recording the eye movement measures,such as the IA Dwell Time,IA First Run Dwell Time and IA Regression Path Duration produced during the process of eye tracking,data will be analyzed between the two types of sentences.Experiment Two adopted one factor and four levels?FMEs,NFMEs,referential FMEs,referential NFMEs?priming condition and the same experimental sentences as in Experiment One,but before reading experimental sentences,but the subjects would see a picture that was consistent with the content of the sentence.By recording the same eye movement measures,A Dwell Time,IA First Run Dwell Time and IA Regression Path Duration,a comparison with Experiment One would be made to prove whether the condition of a priming picture would promote participants'understanding of FMEs.Before the formal experiments,20 postgraduate students from Sichuan International Studies University were selected to give three norming studies on a scale of 1 to 5:The Acceptability Judgment of Materials,Similarity Judgment of Materials and Compatibility Judgment of Materials.In the formal experiments,32postgraduate students were selected from Sichuan International Studies University,who all majored in English and have passed TEM8.Besides,Eye-Link 1000 from Canada SR-Research company was used to record subjects'eye movement when they read the sentences.During the experiments,the subjects were asked to read the sentences on the screen carefully,and then make the key press response after their understanding.All participants'eye movement data were collected into SPSS16.0,a kind of professional data analysis software,and will do statistical analysis on IA Dwell Time,IA First Run Dwell Time and IA Regression Path Duration.The statistical results are demonstrated as follows:?1?In Experiment One,through analyzing the data of IA Dwell Time,IA First Run Dwell Time and IA Regression Path Duration,it was found that under the same physical conditions,there were significant differences when the participants were reading the fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions[t?29?=2.235,p=.033<.05;t?29?=2.799,p=.009<.01;t?29?=3.104,p=.004<.005].Besides,the subjects'understanding time on fictive motion expressions was longer than that on the non-fictive motion expressions on average,which could be illustrated in the following aspects:the mean of the IA Dwell Time M_FMEs=1.7318>M_NFMEs=1.6324,IA First Run Dwell Time M_FMEs=2.5636>M_NFMEs=2.4434,and IA Regression Path Duration M_FMEs=2.4033>M_NFMEs=2.2293.The above results showed that under the same conditions,there were significant differences in the understanding of fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions,and the understanding of fictive motion expressions took longer time.?2?In Experiment Two,the same eye movement measures,IA Dwell Time,IA First Run Dwell Time and IA Regression Path Duration,were analyzed.However,in Experiment Two,there were priming pictures before understanding the sentences.Under such priming condition,no significant differences appeared in Experiment Two[t?29?=0.859,p=.398>.05;t?29?=1.509,p=.142>.05;t?29?=.059,p=.954>.05],but the participants'understanding time on fictive motion expressions was still longer than that on non-fictive motion expressions,which can not only be illustrated from the IA Dwell Time M_FMEs=1.1959>M_NFMEs=1.1688,IA First Run Dwell Time M_FMEs=1.4449>M_NFMEs=1.3846,but also from IA Regression Path Duration M_FMEs=1.1837>M_NFMEs=1.1815.The comparison between Experiment One and Experiment Two illustrated that the priming pictures had a significant priming effect on the comprehension of sentences[t?29?=7.434,p=.000<.001;t?29?=10.281,p=.000<.001;t?29?=11.465,p=.000<.001].All the above analysis showed that the pictures before the sentences can promote the subjects'understanding of fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions,and the understanding of fictive motion expressions took longer than that of non-fictive motion expressions,which illustrated that the comprehension of fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions resulted in various mental simulations as well as different lengths of time on their semantic understanding.In a nutshell,no matter under no priming condition or priming condition,the comprehension of fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions both caused mental simulation,which further demonstrated the fact that the understanding of fictive motion expressions and non-fictive motion expressions was obviously semantic embodied,and the priming conditions can significantly promote the Chinese EFL learners'understanding of fictive motion expressions.