中国英语学习者双语认知收益的对比研究

A Contrastive Analysis of Chinese EFL’s Bilingual Cognitive Benefits

双语使用经历会给双语者带来何种认知变化,尤其是否会带来“认知收益”,是当前心理语言学领域的一个热点议题。通过对比L2高、低水平的中国英语学习者这类匹配度更高的被试在西蒙箭头任务中的表现,本研究发现:L2高水平者无抑制收益上的优势;被试在实验任务中即时形成的“策略性应对”对抑制收益确有影响;L2高水平被试具有稳定的总体反应时优势。分析认为,双语抑制收益存在,但相应实验效应不易观测;策略性应对是一个可能的介入因素;总体反应时优势确是双语认知收益更可靠的指标,应引起后续研究的重视。

As bilingualism is increasingly a norm instead of an exception globally, growing amounts of scholarly interests have been concentrated upon the topic as to what cognitive changes are possibly to take place in bilinguals as a result of their bilingual experiences, since it has long been corroborated that quite a few human capacities are domain-general. Cognitive benefits in particular as a possible type of cognitive changes are currently an especially controversial issue in psycholinguistic studies. The existence of cognitive benefits, if confirmed, will significantly dilute the well-established belief in the negative influence that bilingualism might incur. The related literature, though prolific, is generally unsatisfactory in that more or less uncomparable subjects were recruited in the experiments. In this study, two groups of more comparable subjects, i.e., higher & lower L2 proficiency Chinese EFL learners, were compared in terms of their performances in the Simon Arrow Task. It was found that higher proficiency lear-ners showed no advantages in inhibitory benefits;that participants’ ad hoc strategic countermeasures may affect their inhibitory be-nefits;and that higher proficiency learners showed a robust global RT advantages. It is argued that bilingual inhibitory benefits do exist but are difficult to be observed in experiments;participants’ countering strategies are one of the possible intervening factors;and global RT advantages as a more reliable indicator of bilingual cognitive benefits call for attention by future explorations along this line of inquiry.