外语听力语速感知的认知负荷视角研究

Investigating Perception of Foreign Speech Rate from the Perspective of Cognitive Load

本研究通过控制前置语料相对难度,发现难度较大的听力材料因其可施加较大认知负荷,而使听者对后续语流产生语速偏快、时长变短的"时间缩水"误判。然而当前置语料难度较小时,由于其带来的认知负荷挑战有限,听者则没有出现这种误判。该结果对我们加深对听力语速的全面理解意义重大,因为先前研究都认为测量语速的主要手段是计算语流单元时间内包含多少单词或音节,但本研究发现听力材料的认知负荷大小也是考察语速的一个重要因素。

By manipulating the level of difficulty of the precursor sentence,this research finds out that the difficult sentence,due to the heavy cognitive load it imposes,can induce the shrinking-oftime effect,a perceived increase in the speech rate and shortening of the duration of the sentence.However,the same effect is not observed when the precursor sentence is less difficult and thus less cognitively daunting.These findings contribute significantly to our understanding of the speech rate because previous studies hypothesize that the main way to measure it is to calculate the words or syllables in each time unit,whereas the results from the present study suggest that the cognitive load of the sentence may also be a factor to consider.