Hemispheric Processing In The Construction Of Representation During Chinese Reading Comprehension

The study of reading comprehension in brain can not only help people get more knowledge about the complex relation of language and brain, but also promote the language teaching, diagnoses and treatment of dysphasia. It is very important both on theory and in practice.The left hemisphere has traditionally been considered as superior hemisphere in language processing, but in the past 20 years, more and more researches found that the right hemisphere plays an important role in comprehension of languages. Interaction of two hemispheres is necessary to language processing. However, most of the researches in this area were used English as material or just pay attention to research of word.On the basis of previous researches, we conducted two experiments, three sub-experiments, to explore the hemispheric processing in the construction of representation during Chinese reading comprehension. We use paragraphs and sentences as material of experiments. Through the study, priming paradigm was used in combination with a lateralized visual field (VF) procedure.In experiment 1, we explored how the representation of topic was stored in two hemispheres after it has been constructed in brain completely. Paragraphs containing homograph were used. There are two independent variables: ( i ) visual field of the target presentation was to left or right, i.e. LVF/RH and RVF/LH; (ii ) the relationship of target and context of paragraph and sentence was appropriate or inappropriate. The dependent variable is response tune (RT) of recognition. It was found that RT to target of context appropriate was longer than that of context inappropriate in both LVF/RH and RVF/LH, which implied that the information of whole paragraph and sentence was activated in both hemispheres, i.e. representation of discourse topic will be stored in both hemispheres after constructed completely.In Experiment 2, we shortened the SOA between sentence and target to 90ms to examine whether the topic representation had been constructed in two hemispheres. The result showed it has been constructed and stored in the left hemisphere, but this did not happen in the right hemisphere. The result also suggests that meaning activation of words was strongly influenced by sentence context and meaning frequency in the left hemisphere. It tends to activate the meaning of context appropriate or high meaning frequency. However, the right hemisphere is not sensitive to context and meaning frequency. It seems to activate all meaning involved at the same level.Based on our studies and previous researches, we suggest that the construction of representation of discourse topic .is gradual. It was first constructed in the left hemisphere and then was stored in both hemispheres. The mechanism of meaning activation in two hemispheres is different. It seems that that meaning activation in the left hemisphere is reordered access model, while it is multiple access model in the right hemisphere.