二语水平和认知灵活性对跨认知领域结构启动的影响

Impacts of L2 proficiency and cognitive flexibility on cross-domain structural priming

本研究采用眼动追踪技术,以英语专业大学生和研究生为受试,以由方块或三角形及连线构成的结构图为启动项、英语歧义关系从句为目标项,进行了视觉空间图形结构加工对英语句法加工的跨认知领域结构启动实验,目的是考察二语水平和认知灵活性对启动效应的影响。结果显示:1)图形结构加工能对英语歧义关系从句加工产生跨认知领域结构启动效应;2)二语水平对启动效应存在影响,高二语水平受试启动效应更强,认知灵活性对启动效应存在影响,高认知灵活性受试启动效应更强;3)二语水平与认知灵活性之间存在交互作用,在低认知灵活性条件下,高、低二语水平组之间的启动效应差异显著,认知灵活性可调节二语水平对启动效应的影响。上述发现表明跨认知领域结构启动是一个受制约的过程,语言认知能力和视觉空间图形结构加工能力可能共享抽象结构表征和加工机制。

With English undergraduates and graduates as the subjects,structural graphics formed with squares or triangles and connecting lines as the primes,and English ambiguous relative clauses as the targets,this experimental study uses the eye-tracking technique to explore the impacts of L2 proficiency and cognitive flexibility on the priming effect in cross-domain structural priming from visuo-spatial graphics processing to English syntactic processing.The results reveal the following:1)the prior processing of structural graphics can produce a cross-domain structural priming effect over the following processing of English ambiguous relative clauses.2)L2 proficiency exerts an influence on the priming effect,and participants with higher L2 proficiency show a stronger priming effect;cognitive flexibility also has an impact on the priming effect,and the group with higher cognitive flexibility exhibits a stronger priming effect.3)There is an interaction between L2 proficiency and cognitive flexibility,and a significant difference in the priming effect between the high and the low L2 proficiency groups under the low cognitive flexibility condition.The impact of L2 proficiency is mediated by the participants'cognitive flexibility.These results suggest that cross-domain structural priming is a process influenced by certain factors,and language cognitive ability may have shared abstract representation and processing mechanism with visuo-spatial graphics processing.