Context Modulation On Body-object Interaction Effect In EFL Embodied Word Processing

This study investigates the context modulation on Body-Object Interaction Effect in L2 embodied word processing.140 postgraduate students of English majors are recruited for the experiments.Before the experiments,all of them need to complete the Oxford Quick English Proficiency Test(QPT;quick placement text version 1).After that,we select 128 candidates whose scores meet the advanced standards,and divide them into four groups.Each group has32 participates who take part in only one question context experiment.The research materials are 30 entity words and 30 action words.30 entity words include 15 high BOI words and 15 low BOI words,and 30 action words include 15 relatively high embodiment words and 15 relatively low embodiment words.All test words are selected from the experimental test words of Tousignant & Pexman(2012).This experiment refers to the Tousignant & Pexman(2012)experimental paradigm,and uses E-prime 2.0 and SPSS 20.0 statistical software to test and collect the response time and accuracy rate of each subject to embodied word processing in question contexts.The research results show that:(1)The BOI rate of entity words in L2 lexical processing affects the processing speed and accuracy of the word.The specific manifestation is: the higher the word’ s BOI rate,the easier it is to activate the meaning of the word,and the faster the processing time and higher the accuracy rate of the word.Conversely,the lower the word’s BOI rate,the more difficult it is to activate the meaning of the word,the longer processing time and lower the accuracy rate of the word.This result supports Siakaluk’ s(2008a,b)research on embodied word processing of native English speakers.(2)In four different question context experiments,the body-object interaction(BOI)effect in L2 embodied word processing is also different.The specific performance is as follows: in the first and fourth experiment(single context),the response time of processing high BOI words is significantly faster than that of processing low BOI words,and the accuracy rate of processing high BOI words is significantly higher than that of processing low BOI words,thus,body-object interaction effect is obvious in single contexts.However,the results in the second and third experiments(multi-context)show that the processing time of high BOI words is faster than that of low BOI words,but the difference between reaction time of high BOI words and that of low BOI words is not significant.The processing accuracy of high BOI words is also higher than that of low BOI words,but there is no obvious difference between the accuracy rate of processing high BOI words and that of processing low BOI words.Therefore,the body-object interaction effect is not significant in multi-contexts.(3)Compared with the restriction results of BOI effect in L1 embodiment word processing(Tousignant &Pexman,2012),the restriction results of BOI effect in L2 embodied word processing have both similarities and differences.The specific manifestations are as follows: the BOI effect in L2 processing is also context-dependent.However,there is no significant BOI effect under multi-contextual conditions(Experiment 2 and Experiment 3).This thesis makes an analysis of the response time and accuracy among Chinese advanced English learners,and finds that Chinese advanced English learners are greatly affected by the negative transfer of mother tongue Chinese during word processing.Specifically,they are affected by the relationship between Chinese nouns and verbs,while native English speakers are mainly affected by the judgment category in the question context,which is specifically reflected on the processing expectation brought by the judgment category in the context.In addition,discrepancies of the results between L2 processing and L1 processing may be accounted for other factors such as the acquisition environment and time,which influence different neurological areas and engender different processing depths.