ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2015, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (2): 167-175.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2015.00167

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

语篇背景在语义整合中的作用

陈双1;陈黎静2;杨晓虹1;杨玉芳1   

  1. (1中国科学院心理研究所, 北京 100101) (2福建师范大学心理学系, 福州 350117)
  • 收稿日期:2013-11-15 发布日期:2015-02-25 出版日期:2015-02-25
  • 通讯作者: 杨玉芳, E-mail: yangyf@psych.ac.cn
  • 基金资助:

    国家自然科学基金项目(31070989)。

The Role of Discourse Context on Semantic Integration

CHEN Shuang1; CHEN Lijing2; YANG Xiaohong1; YANG Yufang1   

  1. (1 Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100101, China) (2 Department of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350117, China)
  • Received:2013-11-15 Online:2015-02-25 Published:2015-02-25
  • Contact: YANG Yufang, E-mail: yangyf@psych.ac.cn

摘要:

通过眼动实验考察了语篇背景对不同类型句子语义整合过程的影响。句子类型有3个水平:(1)宾语违反了动词的选择性限制; (2)宾语符合选择性限制, 但是违反了世界知识; (3)无违反。语篇背景有2个水平:(1)中性背景; (2)校正背景。在中性语篇背景下, 句子(1) (2)是不合适的; 而在校正背景下, 三种句子都是合理的。24名大学生被试自然阅读的眼动数据表明, 违反动词选择性限制的目标词上的首次注视时间、回视路径时间和总注视时间, 在中性背景下比在校正背景下长, 注视点个数也更多; 而在非选择性限制违反条件下, 语篇背景的效应只在总注视时间和注视点个数两个指标上显著。这些结果表明, 当句子中的宾语违反了动词的选择性限制时, 语篇背景影响了宾语的早期和晚期加工。而当宾语只违反世界知识时, 语篇背景的作用体现在晚期阶段。语篇背景对当前信息的整合是动态的过程, 并不是只能在固定某个阶段起作用。

关键词: 语篇背景, 语义整合, 选择性限制, 世界知识, 眼动

Abstract:

How do readers integrate incoming words into the local and global discourse context is a central issue in discourse comprehension. Some researchers have suggested that the integration of incoming information with local, proximal context is an automatic and default process. However, the integration of incoming information with the global discourse context employs more attention and may be delayed. On the other hand, some researchers have suggested that incoming information is immediately integrated into the global discourse context. Previous studies also obtained discrepant results concerning the time course of contextual modulation, which might be due to the fact that different types of knowledge violations were used in different studies. Two kinds of knowledge violations were used in previous studies: selectional restriction violations and world knowledge violations. Selectional restriction refers to the semantic constraints on verb’s arguments, which are considered as lexical information. Previous studies have shown that the processing of selectional restriction takes precedence over that of world knowledge. However, it is still unclear whether the precedence of selectional restriction would affect the modulation of global context. Therefore, the current study set out to explore how different kinds of knowledge violations affect global integration in discourse context in an eye-tracking experiment. We constructed discourses consisting of three sentences. The first and second sentences made up a non-fictional or a fictional discourse context. The third sentence was either in (1) selectional restriction violation, (2) world knowledge violation or (3) congruent conditions. In the non-fictional context, sentences in both the selectional restriction and world knowledge violation conditions were incongruent while only the congruent sentences were sensible. However, in the fictional context, all the three kinds of sentences were congruent. 26 university students participated in the experiment. Two were removed due to excessive track losses. Data from 24 (12 males, Mean age = 22.92) participants were used in the statistical analysis. Results showed that for selectional restriction violations, the effect of context was significant in first fixation time, go-past time, total time and number of fixations on the target word as well as first fixation time, total time, number of fixations and regression out count on the post-target region. However, for world knowledge violations, the effect of context was only found in total time and number of fixations on the target region as well as on the post-target region. Participants read the target words and post-target words longer, more frequently in fictional context than in non-fictional context. These results revealed that when object nouns violated selectional restriction, discourse context affected both the early and later stages of word processing. When object nouns violated world knowledge, contextual modulation was only observed on the later time measures. The present study demonstrated that discourse context could override local anomalies, irrespective of the kinds of knowledge that are violated. However, the time course of the integration process was modulated by the kinds of knowledge that are violated. These results establish kinds of knowledge as an important factor for semantic integration in discourse context.

Key words: discourse context, semantic integration, selectional restriction, world knowledge, eye movement.