隐喻映射的反向作用:重量感—亲属词重要性隐喻的ERP研究

Bidirectional property of metaphor: Evidences from an ERP study on weight-importance metaphor

采用事件相关电位(ERP)技术和反应时启动范式,研究亲属词的重要性—重量隐喻映射关系。行为结果表明,亲属词重要性认知激活了重量经验,重要性与重量关系匹配时反应加快;ERP结果显示,重要性概念启动下对物体重量判断激活了P1(70~130ms)、P300(200~400ms)、LPC(400~700ms)等正波成分,且重要性—重量关系不一致条件下的波幅显著大于一致条件,表明大脑对具身经验的激活经历了从初级到高级的加工阶段,支持强式具身理论关于概念表征中感知觉经验即时激活的观点。

The conflict between conceptual metaphor theory and perceptual symbol systems is that CMT believes there exists an asymmetry embodied effect between sensorimotor/conceptual processing, technically,sensation influences conceptual processing and conceptual processing does not influence sensation. However,PSS describes embodied effects that demonstrates bidirectionality.In order to test the hypothesis of the two theories above, we used event-related potentials（ERPs） to study whether there is a bidirectional weight-importance metaphor among the iinship words of Han nationality. Behavioral result showed that the concept ＂importance＂（technically the task that required participants to judge whether the presenting kinship words is improtant/unimportant） had activated the ＂weight＂experience（technically the task that required participants to judge whether the presenting object is heavy/light）. Specifically, when the importance and weight is well matched（＂important＂-＂heavy＂, ＂unimportant＂-＂light＂）, the reaction time will be shorter than in the condition that the improtance and weight is reversed.Morever, the ERPs result showed that the concept importance had alos elicited significant differences in early and late ERP components including： P1（70-130 ms）, P300（200-400 ms）, LPC（400-700 ms）. The most enhanced activity was produced in the occipital and parietal lobe. The pattern was similar to the behavioral results, the inconsistent condition elicited more enhanced ERP effects than the consistent condition on both P300 and LPC. The ERPs result reveals that the conceptual representation may activate the sensation experience, which not only means that there is a bidirectional effect between ＂tenors＂ and ＂vehicles＂,but also means that sensorimotor and conceptual processing may be the same thing——when we think of some abstract concepts, actually we are experincing some sensorimotor processing. And this result is exactly the prophetic of perceptual symbol systems theory.