CFL视角下的汉字加工神经机制

Analysis on the Neural Mechanism of Chinese Character Processing from the CFL Perspective

汉字作为表意文字,与拼音文字存在很大区别,包括空间排布和正字法深度等。在对外汉语教学中,汉字的学习常常成为汉语外语(Chinese as a foreign language, CFL)学习者的首要障碍。鉴于此,越来越多的研究者试图通过心理语言学、神经语言学等方法来探究CFL学习者汉字加工的神经机制。本文探讨近二十年研究者利用事件相关电位(Event-Related Potentials, ERPs)及功能磁共振成像(functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fMRI)技术在这方面的研究进展。当前的ERPs研究表明,CFL学习者与汉语母语者在正字法加工和语音加工方面都存在较大区别,而且前者的汉字加工时间进程受到不同母语背景的影响。此外,由于汉字与拼音文字加工的大脑激活模式有着较大的区别,同时受到任务形态、语言水平、学习策略、习得年龄等因素的影响,因此CFL学习者的大脑激活发展趋势并不完全符合适应/同化假说。基于前人研究,我们认为本领域的研究还应从CFL学习者汉字加工的认知神经机制实验研究中拟构出可描述及可解释的汉字加工理论框架,以指导今后的相关研究。

As a kind of logographic scripts, Chinese characters are greatly different from alphabetic scripts, including their spatial arrangement, orthographic depth and the like. As a result, there are increasingly psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies on Chinese as a foreign language(CFL) learner’s neural mechanism of character processing. This paper reviews the existing ERPs and fMRI researches within the past two decades. The ERPs researches show that the CFL learners’ orthographic and phonological processings are greatly different from those of native Chinese speakers, and the former’s time course of character processing is under the influence of their respective native languages. Besides, since the activation pattern of Chinese character processing is different from that of alphabetic scripts, which is also restricted by tasks, language proficiency, learning strategy and acquisition age, the development of CFL learner’s activation pattern does not perfectly match the accommodation/assimilation hypothesis. Future study in this field should go further to theoretically explore the topic.