語意特徵於中文基礎詞彙處理扮演之角色：事件相關腦電位研究

Abstract

概念的理解與處理一直以來都是個熱門的議題。過去的研究指出，人們在處理自然物的概念時，其感官語意特徵比功能語意特徵來得重要，而在處理人造物的概念時，其功能語意特徵比感官語意特徵來得重要。本文旨在以事件相關腦電位的技術，探討是否前人的發現是來自於語意特徵與語意類別之間的關係遠近。。本實驗招募中文母語人士為受試者，以語意促發作業（semantic priming）與延遲反應（delayed-response task）為設計，請其判斷實驗促發詞（prime，包括感官特徵與功能特徵）是否可以是實驗目標詞（target，包括自然物與人造物）的一個特點。實驗結果發現，在控制了促發詞與目標詞的關聯度後，在N1腦波和N400腦波裡，不同的語意特徵並不會和不同的語意類別產生交互作用，但在LPC腦波裡，不同的語意特徵和不同的語意類別則有交互作用。進一步檢定發現，此交互作用發生在人造物的概念上。根據實驗結果，本研究推斷不同的語意特徵在處理不同的語意類別時，可能有著不同的重要性。而從腦波的時間點來看，不同語意特徵對不同語意類別影響可能為控制歷程（controlled process）而非自動化歷程（automatic process）。This study investigated the role of semantic features in processing basic-level concepts in Mandarin Chinese with the event-related potential (ERP) technique. In previous studies, different semantic features were claimed to have different prominence over different semantic categories (Warrington& McCarthy, 1983; Warrington & Shallice, 1984). To examine whether the observed relationship between semantic features and semantic categories was determined by the relatedness between them, the present study adopted a priming paradigm, with the experimental stimulus being a perceptual or functional feature followed by a natural category or artifact. The relatedness between the features and categories were carefully controlled and the subjects’ task was to judge whether the prime could be one characteristic of the target with a delayed response. The results showed that different semantic categories did not interact with different semantic features in early time windows, N1 (100 ms – 150 ms) and N400 (300 ms – 400 ms), but did so in a later time window, LPC (500 ms – 700 ms) in artifacts. This finding partly supported the sensory-functional theory that different semantic features have different prominence over different semantic categories. Since the interaction was found to exist in artifacts in the present study, it was argued that the prominence of perceptual/functional features over natural categories/artifacts might not be an automatic process but a controlled one.