【作者】 袁媛；

【导师】 董燕萍；

【作者基本信息】 广东外语外贸大学 ， 外国语言学及应用语言学， 2006， 硕士

【摘要】 本文主要围绕着相等词频是否可以得到相等反应时这个问题展开讨论。我们的实验说明相同词频的词不一定能得到相同的反应时,因此收集基础反应时是启动实验(priming paradigm)不可或缺的步骤。 启动实验一般包括实验组和控制组,每一组都由启动词(prime)和目标(target)组成,实验目的是比较受试对实验组和控制组的目标词的反应时。如果受试对这两组目标词的反应时不同,说明实验组的启动词对目标词的影响在大脑存储或处理上不同于控制组;否则,不能说明这种区别的存在。这种比较的前提是:两组目标词在没有加启动词时的反应时(即基础反应时)是相同的。收集基础反应时比较费时费力,很多研究采取了便捷的方法:查找词频,确保实验组和控制组的词频相同,其依据是词频相同的词反应时也相同。本文的研究问题是:词频相同的词反应时相同吗? 我们采用词汇决定任务(lexical decision task)实验方法,即判断真假词:这是一个成对样本T检验设计,实验材料包括受试的母语(中文)和外语(英文)两种语言,每种语言包括两组材料,每组各24个词,两组词词频是一一配对的,没有显著差异。37位中国某大学三年级学生参加实验,反应时数据结果显示:不管是在母语还是在外语中,相同频率的词不一定总能得到相同的反应时。对于母语而言,如果词频都很高,相同频率的词得到相同反应时的机率就很大;相反,这种机率就比较低。而对于外语而言,如果词频低,相同频率的词得到相同反应时的机率就很低,尽管词频高的时候,也有可能得到相同的反应时。 总之,实验说明相同频率的词不一定能得到相同反应时,因此启动实验不应该省略基础反应时的收集比较这个重要步骤。更多还原

【Abstract】 This paper aims to study the necessity of collecting baseline reaction times (RTs) in priming experiments by investigating whether equal word frequency leads to equal baseline RTs.In a priming experiment there are at least two groups of materials, an experimental group and its corresponding control group. There is a priming effect if reaction times to targets in the experimental group are shorter than those to targets in the control group. The priming effect is taken as evidence for the special prime-target relationship in the mental lexicon. That is, prime-targets pairs in the experimental group are more closely located or have stronger connections than prime-targets pairs in the control. However, a possible confounding factor for this conclusion is that the RT difference between the two groups may be attributed to the targets themselves, not to the prime-target relations. The best and most direct way to exclude the influence of this factor is to select targets in such a way that no RTs difference exists in the targets between the two groups when they are not preceded by primes, e.g., to make sure that there is no significant difference between the baseline RTs to the targets in the two groups. But there are studies that replaced this step to collect baseline RTs by selecting two groups of targets that are not different in frequency, on the assumption that equal word frequency leads to equal baseline RTs.We tried to test this assumption in the task of lexical decision in both the L1 and the L2 of our subjects (Chinese learners of English). And we found that,1) For a second / foreign language, matching of frequencies for two lists of words do not lead to equal baseline RTs for the two lists in most cases, no matter how closely matched they are. But occasionally if the frequencies are high, it may lead to insignificant RT differences.2) For the first language, matching of frequencies for two lists of words do not necessarily lead to equal baseline RTs. If the two lists of words are closely matched (one-to-one match) AND if they are words of high frequencies, they lead to equal baseline RTs in most cases. But otherwise it may not be the case.The results show that the step to collect baseline RTs cannot be omitted in priming experiments, esp. for the subjects’ second language.更多还原