中文词汇加工中的饱和现象

Semantic Satiation in Representing Chinese Words

研究通过4个实验探讨中文词汇加工中的饱和现象及其发生阶段。实验1采用类别匹配任务,结果发现,当字形和语义信息都重复时出现了饱和现象。实验2~3采用词汇匹配任务和类别匹配任务,结果发现,只有字形信息或只有语义信息重复时都不能引发饱和现象。实验1~3的结果表明,与英文饱和相似,只有类别标签在字形和语义上的同时重复才能引发中文饱和,而且发生在字形和语义的联结阶段。实验4关注了汉字的表义部件,结果发现,中文饱和也能由表义部件的重复引发,体现了中文饱和的特殊性。

Many of us may have a noticeable experience： when we are continuously looking at a character or a word, it will then become strange and weird. This phenomenon was first investigated in 1970, and it was defined as verbal satiation back then. Researchers have applied various paradigms to demonstrate that the semantic satiation effect, which is common in the repetition of English words, also exists in Chinese and Japanese characters. However, some researchers claimed that the satiation in Chinese characters has nothing to do with semantics but is merely an effect of the structure and that, therefore, the satiation in Chinese characters should be named as ＂orthographic satiation＂. Different ideas among the researchers have evoked a question on this issue： Is there an essential difference between Chinese and English on verbal satiation or is it just a matter of detection？ The representation and the mechanism of verbal satiation require further discussions. The current study aimed at investigating the satiation in Chinese words in a speed category matching paradigm. Four experiments were conducted in our research. In experiment 1, a category matching paradigm was used to examine whether the repetition in Chinese words could cause satiation. In experiment 2, a lexical repetition paradigm was used to test if the satiation occurred in the process of lexical representation. In experiment 3, a meaning repetition paradigm was used to test if the satiation occurred in the process of semantic representation. In experiment 4, we mainly explored the verbal satiation influenced by Chinese ideographic words. All experiments included two within-participant factors： 2 repetition status（repetitive vs. nonrepetitive） × 2 matching status（matched vs. unmatched）. All participants were Chinese college students without any type of reading disorder. In the data analysis, the trial position in each block was regarded as a new factor in order to successfully detect the repetition factor.The results of experiment 1 showed that the reaction time was prolonged due to both lexical and semantic repetition, which indicates the occurrence of satiation. However, the results of experiment 2 and 3 suggested that lexical and semantic repetition alone did not trigger satiation. Results in the first three experiments consistently showed that saturation in Chinese could be caused only when the category labels were repeated in orthography and semantics at the same time. Besides, the Chinese satiation occurred at the connection phase between orthography and semantics, which was similar to satiation in English. Moreover, the results of experiment 4 showed ideographic words could also trigger satiation in the process of semantic repetition, which reflected the particularity of Chinese satiation. Results in the present research suggested that there was semantic satiation in Chinese words. In other words, there was no essential difference of satiation between English and Chinese. However, since the orthography of Chinese words includes abundant semantic information, the satiation can occur solely at either the associative or the semantic level.