The Impact Of Ancient Chinese Poetic Experience On Sentence Semantic Processing: Evidence From Behavior And ERP

Language is the product of human experience,which means semantic processing must be modulated by individual experience.However,in most empirical studies of semantic integration,few studies have been conducted on the moderating effect of individual experience on semantic processing.A recent study found that literary experience had a moderating effect on counterfactual reasoning,and P600 effects disappear for those who had read abundant literary works.According to the hypothesis of the special genre and the neurocognitive poetic model,reader's reading process is restricted by the content genre.Many other studies have shown that there are differences in behavior and neural activity between reading poetry and other literature.Chinese ancient poems contain a lot of irregular collocations and figurative language phenomena,while these unreasonable expressions are accepted.Readers have a higher tolerance for the comprehension of poetry.Whether there is any chance for those who often read ancient poems form a specific metaphor experience,and transfer it to the semantic integration of general sentences?This research explores the influence of Chinese ancient poetry experience on sentence semantic processing through behavioral experiments and neuro-electrophysiological techniques.36 participants were selected for the behavior experiment,half of who are ancient poetry experts.The researcher adopted the modified semantic violation paradigm,and the sentences employed in the experiment were in the same length.By replacing keywords at the end of the sentence,three conditions were formed: plausible sentences,sentences with small violation and sentences with large violation.The experiment required subjects to read several sentences and evaluate the semantic rationality of the sentences by a 6-point scale.The results found that the ancient poetry experts gave a higher rating to the sentences with small semantic violations than the non-poetry experts.However,there was no significant difference in the rating of other two conditions between two groups.New 70 participants joined in the ERP experiment,and half of whom are ancient poetry experts.The experiment used the paradigm of rapid presentation,where the task of subjects were consistent with the behavioral experiment.The ERP results found that in the early stage sentences under two unplausible conditions induced larger negative waves N400 in the 250-500 ms time window for both groups,while N400 effects reduced under the condition of sentences with small violation merely for the poetry expert group.The results of behavioral experiments and EEG experiments consistently showed that people with Chinese ancient poetry experience are more tolerant of sentences with small semantic violation,who may transfer an implicit positive poetry reading patterns.This research examines the moderating effect of individual experience on semantic processing,which also provides direct and novel experimental evidence for neurocognitive poetic model.