| With the Event-Related Potentials(ERP)technique,the study investigated Chinese English learners’ comprehension of English manual action language.Totally 23 native Chinese-speaking students(15 female)ranging 22-27 years old(M=23.8;SD=1.18)who studied English as a second language(L2)participated in the experiment.All the participants were required to pass TEM 4 or CET 6,both of which enjoyed almost the same validity to testify a middle-level L2 learner’s English capability in China.Totally 40 sets of stimuli were selected after three pre-tests as the experimental sentences,and 80 sentences were finally composed by 40 pairs of action phrases separately with “while” and “after”.Each sentence consisted of three parts.The first part was a verb phrase marked by “while” as the parallel structure or by “after” sequential structure;the second part was another verb phrase with the subject who operated the actions;and the third part was a phrase to provide a reasonable context.Two types of sentences were kept almost the same except for the temporal conjunctions.Besides,60 filler sentences were also included in the experiment with reversed sensibility to that of experimental sentences.Based on the analyses of time domain and time frequency of ERP data,explicit cognitive control effect(N200 effect)and embodiment effect(N400 effect)were found in the study.A conclusion was drawn that the processing mechanism of second language(L2)was similar to that of first language(L1)as they both made semantic construction by embodied simulation in comprehending manual action language.In addition,difference was also found between two types of language processing,that is,there was a cognitive control effect in the embodied simulation of L2 rather than in L1,as the manual action phrases in L1 was activated automatically and thus needed to be controlled during comprehending the action phrases in L2,interfering L2’s semantic processing.Furthermore,we also found that congruent English manual action language elicited a larger cognitive control effect than the incongruent English manual action language because it was much easier to activate the corresponding translations in L1 to Chinese English learners with greater familiarity.Therefore,combining two effects in the study,we can conclude that the embodiment effect in L2 may exist but it become weak due to the occurrence of cognitive control effect triggered by the competition between L1 and L2. |
