The Mental Simulation Time Course Of Chinese Isolated Negative Sentences With Continuous Uncertain States

The core question of negation research is the time course of negation processing, the mechanism and the mastery of information. In the previous studies, the researchers argued whether simulation was completed in one step or two steps on processes of negative sentences comprehension. In addition, some researchers come up with the anchor-based activation and satisfaction constrained model. Under the two-step simulation hypothesis, some researchs support people can complete the simulation of actual state in the medium term, others argue that people will complete the simulation of actual state in the later period. In short, the findings of time course of negation processing and mechanisms are different, due to the differences of selected paradigms, categories of language, types of sentence and background information in negation research.In order to further explore and compare the time course and mechanism of negative sentence processing, we classified the categories of negative sentences with different states on the basis of previous studies. In the present study, we choose the isolated negative sentences with continuous uncertain states as experimental materials. Isolated negative sentences with continuous uncertain states is the type Ⅱ in the study of Bianchi et al. (2011) about negation and psychological dimensions. This kind of negation dimension metrically characterized by moderate asymmetry. Topologically, the shorter pole is a bounded range and the longer pole is an unbounded range. The study of isolated negative sentences tending to the large border with continuous uncertain states show that people can complete the simulation of actual state with two steps, moreover, negation are completed at the middle stage of comprehension. Therefore, how is the time course and the mechanism in processing isolated negative sentences tending to the small border with continuous uncertain states. And what is the similarity and difference between the two kinds of sentence which are approaching to the small border and large border.To explore this question, the present study choose the classical sentence-picture match paradigm as experimental paradigm,2 (border polarity:tending to large border vs small border) × 2 (sentence type:the Chinese definite unbounded affirmative sentence vs. the Chinese definite unbounded negative sentence)× 2 (match type between the state depicted by pictures and the state described by sentence:match vs. mismatch) within-subject design as experimental design, response time and accuracy in picture judgments as outcome variables, to explore the mental simulation process during the early (250 ms), middle (750 ms) and late (1500 ms) stages.The results showed that the processing of isolated negative sentences tending to the large border with continuous uncertain states support two-step simulation hypothesis, but they simulated the negative states in the medium term and completed the simulation of real states in the later period. The processing of isolated negative sentences tending to the small border with continuous uncertain states support one-step simulation hypothesis. In another words, the simulation of this kind of negative sentence can complete at the first stage of comprehension..With the advance of processing, the mental representations of two states exist at the same time, and at the late stage only the final state can be represented in the mind, the representation of negated state can be removed.