Perceptual Capacity And Its Influencing Factors In Chinese Lexical Semantic Processin

Under the divided attention,the amount of information obtained from processing multiple words simultaneously depends on the perceptual capacity.Previous studies on English words have shown that,the processing way under the divided attention is all-or-none serial processing way,which means only one word can be processed correctly in a single fixation,some studies also showed that there is the right visual field(RVF)advantage in the English words processing.However,there are many differences between Chinese and Pinyin characters in text features and visual lateralization,does the serial limits also exist in the semantic processing of Chinese words? The Study 1 in this research aimed to explore the perceptual capacity performance of Chinese words in the semantic processing by using same paradigm of English studies,which mainly in three aspects:(1)Is the semantic processing of Chinese words limited by the perceptual capacity?(2)Does the semantic processing of Chinese words also manifest the right visual field advantage?(3)Are the semantic processing of Chinese words and the perceptual capacity also affected by word frequency? On the basis of Study 1,Study 2 further investigated the distribution of attention and the effect of semantic bias on word recognition and perceptual capacity.Two studies(three experiments)were included by using the semantic classification task:In Study 1,the within-subject design of 2(attention condition: focus,divided)× 2(word frequency: high,low)was carried out to examine the performance of perceptual capacity in the semantic processing of Chinese words.The single-character words were set as materials in Experiment 1,18 college students were recruited as participants,15 were valid.The two-character words were set as materials in Experiment 2,16 college students were recruited as participants.The semantic classification task that restricted eye movements was adopted in both Study 1 and Study 2.Each participant was measured for 3 times to verify whether all aspects of perceptual capacity in the semantic processing of Chinese words are similar to the results in English word.The results showed that the perceptual capacity under the divided attention condition in both experiments was between the fixed-capacity and unlimited-capacity parallel processing model,which was different from the serial processing results in English.In Experiment 1,there was no significant difference between the results of the left and right words,but in Experiment 2,the accuracy was significantly higher and the reaction time was significantly shorter in the right words compared to the left words,which verified the results in English.In Study 2,the within-subject design of 2(attention condition: focus,divided)× 4(semantic bias:initial-initial,initial-final,final-initial,final-final)was carried out to examine the distribution of attention and the effect of semantic bias on the perceptual capacity in Experiment 3,16 college students were recruited as participants.The results showed that the accuracy was higher when the semantic bias was on the final word in focus attention condition.In distributed attention condition,the left words were not affected by the semantic bias,while the right words had higher accuracy and smaller reaction time when the semantic bias was on the final word.The following conclusions can be drawn according to the experimental results:Firstly,under the divided attention condition,the semantic processing of Chinese words conforms to the parallel processing way with large capacity,which is inconsistent with English words.Secondly,the performance of visual lateralization in semantic processing is different between single-character words and two-character words.The processing performance of the left words is similar to that of the right words in the single-character words,while the two-character words have the same right visual field processing advantage as the English words.Thirdly,word frequency has the significant effect on the semantic processing and perceptual capacity.The semantic processing performance of high-frequency words is better than that of lowfrequency words,and the perceptual capacity of high-frequency words in the divided attention condition is larger.Fourthly,semantic bias has the significant effect on the semantic processing and perceptual capacity.The final semantic bias shows the processing advantage.The initial-final semantic bias condition shows a larger perceptual capacity and a stronger right field advantage in the divided attention condition,which does not support the hypothesis of gradient attention distribution in the case of divided attention.