Situational diversity affects human visual vocabulary processing
December 03, 2019 09:09 Source: "Chinese Social Sciences Journal" Issue 1828, December 3, 2019 Author: Zhang Jingjing Wang Xin

In research on visual word recognition and text reading,Word frequency is one of the variables that researchers pay most attention to。A large number of behavioral research findings,People’s processing of words speeds up as word frequency increases。Neural electrophysiological research also shows that low-frequency word processing is more difficult,And compared with high-frequency words, it will induce P200 or N400 components with larger amplitude。Therefore,Many computational models in psycholinguistics,Such as connectionist theoretical model (interactive activation model、Distributed development model、Context Diversity Model、Dual-channel waterfall model) and dual-processing model both regard word frequency as an important variable affecting vocabulary cognitive processing。

However,In recent years, researchers have questioned the nature of the word frequency effect: the facilitation of high-frequency word processing,Is it because the word form is more familiar,Or because high-frequency words appear in more diverse situations?According to the second hypothesis,James S. Adelman proposed contextual diversity。Compared with word frequency, counting according to the absolute number of word occurrences,Situational diversity is a relative quantity,It refers to the number of texts in which a word appears。Language understanding and language production experimental results from Indo-European languages ​​and Chinese have consistently shown,Diversity of vocabulary situations,Rather than word frequency, it affects the cognitive processing of visual words。

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James S. Adelman et al. used English as experimental material,Control word frequency and situation diversity simultaneously,The above two hypotheses were tested through behavioral bet365 best casino games experiments。Results found,When the situational diversity of the word is consistent,On two tasks of word naming and word judgment,There is no significant difference between high-frequency words and low-frequency words,That is, the word frequency effect disappears;When the word frequencies of the two groups of words are the same,Words with greater contextual diversity are processed faster on both tasks,That is, there is a significant situational diversity effect。This study shows for the first time,Visual word processing is affected by situational variety rather than word frequency。

Then,Patrick Plummer and others used eye tracking technology to further examine the effect of vocabulary situation diversity。With James S. Adelman et al. use individual words differently,Patrick Plummer and others put manipulated words in sentences,To examine how people process this material that is closer to natural reading,How word frequency and situational diversity work。The experimental results obtained consistent findings,i.e. for all eye movement indicators reflecting early and late processing,When controlling for situational diversity,Word frequency effect is no longer significant;When controlling word frequency,There is still a significant lexical context diversity effect。Manuel Perea et al. conducted a developmental study using Portuguese-speaking children。Under experiment,Children are presented with one word at a time,Ask children to decide whether the word is a real word or a pseudoword。Experiment Got With James S. Adelman and other similar results,i.e. for children,The diversity of vocabulary situations rather than word frequency has become the main factor affecting vocabulary processing。

In addition to the vocabulary comprehension process,Some researchers have examined the relationship between word frequency and situation diversity in the field of vocabulary learning。Thomas T. Discovered by Hills et al.,Diversity of lexical contexts in caregivers’ spoken language Bet365 lotto review predicts the sequence of children’s early vocabulary learning。Later,Michael N. Jones et al. conducted a series of experimental studies,Discover whether artificial language or natural language is used as experimental material,The subjects’ vocabulary learning was not affected by word frequency,But it is affected by the semantic number of words。Accordingly,Michael N. Jones et al. believe that it is not the absolute number of chapters in which words appear,It is the number of word semantics in these passages that affects vocabulary learning。Polysemantic words have more conceptual representations in the psychology dictionary,In the process of vocabulary learning,The semantic meaning of this word is continuously strengthened,Thereby promoting learning。Brendan T. Johns integrated the concept of semantic diversity into the concept of situational diversity,That is, situational diversity is the change in meaning of words in different situations,rather than an absolute number of situations。

 Observe in Chinese

The above studies are all from the Indo-European language family,So in the Sino-Tibetan language family,What is the relationship between word frequency and situation diversity?Different from Indo-European languages,Sino-Tibetan languages ​​have some outstanding common features。First,Except certain types of languages,Each syllable expresses different meanings with different tones。Secondly,Monosyllabic roots account for the vast majority,And most of them can be used freely。Last,Word order and function words are the main means of expressing grammatical meaning in Sino-Tibetan languages。It can be seen from this,Monosyllabic roots are an important part of Sino-Tibetan languages。Based on these characteristics,Some researchers use Chinese, one of the most typical representatives of the Sino-Tibetan language family, as experimental material,Examined the situational diversity effect of monosyllabic Chinese characters and disyllabic words in Chinese Bet365 lotto review sentence comprehension。

Chen Qingrong and others first used eye movement technology,Examined the situational diversity effect of disyllabic words in Chinese natural sentence reading。The experiment obtained similar findings to Indo-European languages: when controlling word frequency,Situational diversity affects eye movement indicators reflecting early and late processing;When controlling situation diversity,Word frequency effect disappears。Therefore,This study is the first to extend the situational diversity effect in reading to Sino-Tibetan languages ​​represented by Chinese。In addition,It also has two outstanding contributions。First,Unlike Patrick Plummer and others who put three groups of words into sentences with different structures,This study placed three groups of words in the same sentence in Experiment 1,Thus excluding the possible influence of sentence structure in the study by Patrick Plummer et al.。Secondly,Experiments 2a and 2b compared the impact of word frequency differences between LWF vocabulary and control groups on sentence reading,When the difference in word frequency is found to be larger,Still no significant word frequency effect found,Thus indicating that the lack of word frequency effect is not the result of a limited word frequency range。

Except for two-syllable words,Monosyllable Chinese characters are the smallest sounds in Chinese、meaning unit,It is also the basic element that makes up two-character words。Consistent findings from previous behavioral and ERP studies,The frequency of Chinese characters is an important variable affecting Chinese character processing,When the frequency of Chinese characters decreases,People’s processing is more difficult。So is it similar to word frequency,After controlling the situational diversity of Chinese characters,The word frequency effect will no longer be significant?Chen Qingrong and others used an experimental design similar to words,Further examination of the situational diversity effect of the first Chinese character Bet365 lotto review in disyllabic words。Results found,After excluding factors such as sentence structure and limited word frequency range,Only situational diversity, not word frequency, affects early and late eye movement indicators。

Then,Chen Qingrong’s team uses vocabulary judgment tasks,Further investigation of the cognitive neural mechanism of situation diversity effect in Chinese character reading。Results found,After controlling situation diversity,No word frequency effect was found on the more sensitive ERP indicators;After controlling word frequency,Chinese characters with higher situational diversity induce a larger LPC effect in the 400-600ms time window,Chinese characters that may indicate greater situational diversity will be activated、Process more situational information。

Mei C. A recent study by Zhang et al. used Chinese pseudowords as experimental materials,Examined the role of situational diversity in adults’ new word learning。Results found,Compared to new words appearing in a single context,When new words appear in two different situations,The learning effect of new words is better。Researchers believe that this may be due to various situations that allow people to establish more stable and rich semantic representations of new words。This study is consistent with the conclusions of the Indo-European language family,Affirmed the role of situational diversity in Chinese vocabulary learning,But the researchers did not examine the relationship between word frequency and situation diversity,Future research can further explore this。

 Promote relevant research to support language teaching

In recent years,Research on situational diversity is progressing rapidly。A series of research findings,Either for Indo-European languages ​​or Sino-Tibetan languages,Whether words appear alone or embedded in sentences,It is the diversity of lexical situations rather than word frequency that affects visual word processing。On this basis,There are still some issues that need further exploration。

First,The emergence of situational diversity effect,Challenges previous Bet365 app download findings of a large number of word frequency effects,And questioned the lexical processing model based on word frequency effect。Then,What is the intrinsic mechanism of situational diversity effect,What is the essential difference between it and the word frequency effect?If situation diversity and word frequency have similar processing mechanisms,Then word frequency in the lexical processing model can be directly replaced by situational diversity。If the two have different processing mechanisms,Then the modification of the model requires more complex and systematic considerations。Future research can combine EEG、FMRI and other cognitive neuroscience technologies explore the cognitive neural mechanisms of situational diversity,Thus further revealing the nature of situational diversity processing。

Secondly,Manipulation of situational diversity in existing research,All achieved by looking for words with different situational diversity in the corpus。If in experimental design,Researchers concretized the indicator of situational diversity into a topic or a situation,Thus directly manipulating the situational diversity of words,This design also has another advantage。Previous studies only included three types of words,There is no 2×2 complete factorial experimental design,This is because it is difficult to find enough words with low context and high word frequency in the corpus。If you directly create a situation or topic for comparison in the experiment,This problem will also be solved。

Finally,Applied research on situational diversity effects deserves further attention。Whether it is Indo-European or Sino-Tibetan,Research has found that situational diversity plays a positive role in language learning。On this basis,Researchers can further explore the use of second language learning or children’s mother tongue learning,And in the process of correcting language barriers,If an educator or caregiver teaches a new word in multiple semantic contexts,Whether it will achieve better language learning results than a single situation。

  (This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Fund Key Project "Research on Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Rhythm and Poetry Understanding in Ancient Chinese Poetry Reading" (18AYY010)

(Author’s unit: School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University)

Editor: Zhang Jing
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