汉、英本族语者时间思维方式对母语和二语加工的影响

The Influence of Chinese and English Speakers' Temporal Thinking Patterns on L1 and L2 Processing

本研究以检验"思维方式影响语言加工"假说为理论起点,以汉、英本族语者为研究对象,通过两个心理学实验分别探索了时间思维方式对母语及二语加工的影响。每个实验包括时间排序任务和启动任务。时间排序任务要求受试将几组描绘事件变化发展的图片按照正确的时间顺序进行排列,以考察受试思考时间的水平或垂直倾向性。启动任务要求受试在计算机上先后判断一个非语言的水平或垂直启动刺激以及一个描述时间关系的目标语句是否正确,其目的在于考察非语言的启动刺激对受试加工语言目标刺激的反应时间是否产生影响。实验结果显示:1)习惯性思维方式对于母语的加工有着重要的影响。受试思考时间的水平或垂直倾向性使其在相应启动条件下加工目标语句的速度明显快于另一种启动条件;2)与习惯性思维方式作用于母语的效果类似,习惯性思维方式对于第二语言的加工也有着重要的影响。以上结果初步验证了"思维方式影响语言加工"假说。

Two experiments were carried out to testify A hypothesis of'Thinking Affects Language Processing'proposed in this study.To be specific,Experiments 1 and 2 focused on the influence of Chinese and English speakers’temporal thinking patterns on their L1 processing and L2 processing respectively.Each participant needed to complete the temporal arrangement task and the priming task.In temporal arrangement task,participants were asked to arrange in order a series of pictures depicting temporal sequences of natural events,aimed to elicit howparticipants tended to represent time.In the priming task,participants were asked to successively verify a horizontal or vertical nonlinguistic prime and a linguistic target sentence depicting a temporal order.The purpose of the priming task was to measure the effect of the nonlinguistic graphic prime on participants’processing of the linguistic target.Results demonstrate that:1)The habitual ways of thinking exert profound effects on L1 processing.Both the Chinese and English participants who tended to perceive time in terms of a horizontal axis were faster to verify a temporal target sentence after a horizontal prime than after a vertical prime.Likewise,the Chinese participants who showed salient vertical bias for temporal thinking were faster to verify a temporal target sentence after a vertical prime than after a horizontal prime.2)The habitual ways of thinking also exert significant influences on L2 processing.Taken together,the findings provide evidence in support of the'Thinking Affects Language Processing'hypothesis.