| Elderly stereotypes refer to social members' stereotypes on the elderly group.It usually depends on social members' sensory integration of the characteristics of the elderly group(such as personality,appearance,competitiveness,moving styles,etc.).Previous studies on the activation of the elderly stereotypes was in two angles,including the impact of the elderly stereotype activation on the memory or behavior of the in-group members,and the impact of the elderly stereotype activation on the memory or behavior of the out-group members.However,whether the activation of the elderly stereotypes affects the process of motion sentence comprehension is scarcely addressed.This study expects to use different modal priming paradigms through behavioral experiments to investigate the effect of the activation of the elderly stereotype under different modal priming tasks on the mental simulation of the motion events,the specific research questions are as follows:(1)Does activation of the elderly stereotype under picture-priming paradigm and word-priming paradigm affect Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of English and Chinese motion sentences comprehension?(2)Does activation of the elderly stereotype under different modal priming paradigms affect Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of English and Chinese motion sentences comprehension differently?(3)What's the difference between the effects of activation of the elderly stereotype on Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of English and Chinese motion sentences comprehension?This study consisted of two experiments.Subjects were 60 postgraduates majoring in English language and literature at Sichuan International Studies University,of which 58 passed TEM-8 and 2 passed CET-6.Experiment One was 2(the elderly stereotype activated,the elderly stereotype non-activated)× 2(high-speed motion sentence,low-speed motion sentence)× 2(Chinese,English)mixed designed,adopting the picture-priming mode.In the first experiment,30 subjects were selected.The experimental task was to read the sentences as soon as possible after seeing the pictures,and to press any key to continue the experiment when the subject fully understand the sentence.The reaction time of the sentence were recorded automatically.Experiment Two was 2(the elderly stereotype activated,the elderly stereotype non-activated)× 2(high-speed motion sentence,low-speed motion sentence)× 2(Chinese,English)mixed designed,adopting the word-priming mode.In this experiment,30 subjects were selected,too.The experimental task was to read the sentences as soon as possible after seeing the words,and when the participants fully understood the sentence,they could press any key to continue the experiment.The reaction time of the sentence were recorded automatically.The experiments were programmed and executed by E-prime2.0.The analysis of reaction time of different conditions was conducted respectively and with ±2.5 standard deviations,the invalid data were eliminated.After that,the valid data was input into SPSS 16.0 for statistical analysis.The whole study was conducted in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning in SISU.The research results are as follows:(1)The activation of the elderly stereotype under picture-priming paradigm slows down Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of Chinese high-speed and low-speed motion sentences(F = 24.388,p =.000 <.05).The activation of the elderly stereotype under word-priming paradigm slows down Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of Chinese high-speed and low-speed motion sentences(F =10.883,p =.003 <.05).The results show that the activation of the elderly stereotype is also an activation of embodied information based on previous experience.(2)Activation of the elderly stereotype under different modal priming paradigms show no significant difference on the mental simulation of Chinese EFL learners' comprehension of Chinese motion events(F = 1.329,p =.254),also nosignificant difference on English motion events(F =.118,p =.733).It shows that activation degree of the experiential information has no significant effect on Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of both Chinese and English motion sentences.(3)Comparing effects of activation of the elderly stereotype on Chinese motion sentences with effects on English ones,it is clear that when Chinese EFL learners process Chinese motion sentences,both the factor “the elderly stereotype activation”(picture-activated: F = 24.388,p =.000 <.05;word-activated: F = 10.883,p =.003 <.05)and the factor “motion sentence speed”(picture-activated: F = 3.457,p =.075 >.05;word-activated: F = 6.785,p =.015 <.05)show a significant main effect;when Chinese EFL learners process English motion sentences,no significant main effect for the factor “the elderly stereotype activation”(picture-activated: F =2.574,p =.121 >.05;word-activated: F = 3.4,p =.077 >.05)and the factor“motion sentence speed”(picture-activated: F =.332,p =.570 >.05;word-activated:F = 2.206,p =.150 >.05).Interaction between “activation” and “speed” only shows in comprehension of Chinese motion sentences.The results show that effects of the activation of the elderly stereotype on Chinese and English motion sentences are inconsistent,and the effects on mother tongue is much greater than that on second language.The above experimental results show that the activation of the elderly stereotypes(picture-priming or word-priming)has effects on the Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of Chinese high-speed and low-speed motion sentences.Different activation degrees do not make different results in general.The activation of the elderly stereotype slowed down Chinese EFL learners' mental simulation of Chinese motion sentences,but has no significant effect on English ones.Semantic embodiment exist in the motion sentences comprehension process. |
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