A Preliminary Study On The Structure Of Chinese Concept

Category-specific semantic deficits are the phenomenon that patients' conceptual knowledge may be selectively impaired for specific categories of objects while others remain relatively preserved.A number of theories have been proposed to account for this phenomenon,including the domain-specific hypothesis(Caramazza & Shelton,1998),the senory/functional theory(Warrington & McCarthy,1987) and the conceptual stucture account(Tyler & Moss,2001).Among them,conceptual structure account mostly differs from others is conceptual structure account suggested that semantic memory do not spread different systems according to different categories. Category separation is caused by difference betweeen concept representation structure.Research on concept feature structure support concept structure account,but there was no similar research on Chinese concept.This research use Chinese concept as experimental material,examinations Chinese concept features,and to test the the central prediction of conceptual structure account—that there will be a consistent disadvantage in processing the distinctive features of living things with other kinds of features—even in the normal conceptual system.In experiment 1 we use feature list way to study Chinese concept structure,including class life concept and class non-life concept,these two kinds similarity are matched by subject'assess.Experiment 1 gets two kinds of concept feature lists,it is found that non-life concept concept feature higher significantly than specificy of class life concept.It is identical with the result of that English as experimental material.Experiment 2 use feature verification performance to explore characters of Chinese concept feature specific feature and common feature.Experimental material comes from experiment 1.Compile experimental routine by E-Prime.Ask subjects to judge the the features appearing lately whether belongs the former ones as quickly and accurately as possible,and record the judgement time and mistake rate.someting found by analyzing is that in Chinese concept class life concept specific feature activation has a disadvantage effect,the result doesn't support concept structure account,class life concept feauture judgement time less significantly than that of class non-life concept feauture.It suppports domain-specific hypothesis.