Extraction Of Affordance In Text Comprehension

As it develops, psycholinguistics become more and more influenced by the Embodied Philosophy, and theorists do not believe in Proposition Symbol System any longer. They proposed a new system called Perceptual Symbol System, which considers cognition a embodied progress, and believe in that the way we read and think is very similar with the way we percept. Zwaan proposed a theory framework based on Perceptual Symbol System in 2004, which is called The Immersed Experiencer Frame. IEF suggests the progress of reading comprehension consists of three progress called: activation, construal and integration, and this progress is a process of percept the scene which the text described. This framework is supported by a lot of experimental data, and very advisable. However, it have not explain a vital problem, that is in the progress of construal, how elements integrate into a whole event.The extraction of affordance is very important to percept environment. Affordance is a possibility that an attribute of environment made a behavior of animal possible. Although a vital concept in Perceptual Psychology and Ecologic Psychology, it is seldom mentioned in research of reading comprehension. We suppose that affordance is also a vital concept in reading comprehension, and can organize other information in construal.We designed three experiments to inspect the importance of affordance in reading comprehension. The first experiment is a 4-level one factor design, and inspects the recognition of words which have connection of different degree with affordance. The result suggests that subjects recognize words of affordance better, and recognized words have strong connection with affordance better. It implies that subject will extract affordance from text automatically, and affordance can organize other information. In a construal, affordance can organize other information.The second experiment is 2×2 two factors design, which inspects how much time it took by extraction of affordance and attribute. The result suggests that subject can access affordance faster than attribute. It implies that subject can access affordance directly, and no need to access attribute first.The third experiment is a 2-level one factor design, inspects the time span of affordance extraction in attribute-presence condition or attribute-absence condition. The result inspects that subject can access affordance faster in attribute-presence condition; it implies that subject can get affordance by make a inference from attribute, and inference will be faster than access affordance directly.All the result suggests that affordance is important in reading comprehension: it organizes information, organize elements in construal. Affordance can be access directly in reading comprehension, but subject can get it by inference also. Which method used depends on whether attribute is presence or not.