认知与发展心理学研究室知识库

摘要词汇的意义包括字面意义和非字面意义，其中隐喻意义是非字面意义的重要组成部分，在词汇意义学习研究中，大部分研究关注字面意义的学习，也积累了一些实验证据，那么在隐喻意义学习中，学习者能否习得词汇的隐喻意义？本研究想借鉴字面意义学习的范式——语境学习范式，考察上述问题。具体分为两个实验：实验1在学习阶段创设了支持字面意义的语境和支持隐喻意义的语境，分别学习词汇的字面意义和隐喻意义。在测验阶段，要求被试完成词汇判断任务，新词充当启动词，目标词包括三种类型：对应概念(反映了字面意义学习)、本体词(反映了隐喻意义学习)和无关词。结果发现在词汇判断任务中，本体词和无关词诱发的N400不存在差异，没有新词对本体词的启动效应，也就是没有习得词汇的隐喻意义。我们认为，可能任务设置导致的不同认知资源需求程度影响了对隐喻意义学习效果的探测，因此实验2进一步使用语义相关判断任务，考察被试能否习得词汇的隐喻意义。这一任务需要被试有意识的加工词汇的语义信息，从而可以保证被试加工到词汇的语义层面。结果发现，在语义相关判断任务中，本体词比无关词诱发更小的N400，说明新词确实可以启动本体词，习得词汇的隐喻意义。本研究说明被试能够习得词汇的隐喻意义，隐喻意义的学习比字面意义的学习需要付出更大的认知努力。

Abstract: Lexical meaning contains literal meaning and non-literal meaning, and the metaphorical meaning is an important part of non-literal meaning. Previous lexical meaning learning studies mainly focus on the literal meaning. Little is known about the metaphorical meaning learning. The current study adopted the contextual learning paradigm, which was widely used in literal meaning studies, to explore whether participants were able to get the metaphorical meaning of the novel word. Two experiments were designed to explore the first question. In Experiment 1, the novel words were embedded in two types of learning contexts: one supported the metaphorical meaning (metaphorical meaning learning condition: ML condition), and the other supported the literal meaning (literal meaning learning condition: LL condition). The learning effect was assessed via a lexical decision task with event-related potentials (ERPs) being recorded. In this task, the novel words served as primes, the literal corresponding concepts of the novel words (CC targets), the topic words (TO targets) and unrelated words (NR targets) served as target words. The results showed that there were no difference between the N400s elicited by the TO targets and NR targets, indicating that participants could not construct the relation between the novel words and topic words. We thought that the task might affect the demand for cognitive effort. In Experiment 2, a semantic-relatedness judgment task was adopted to explore the novel words’ metaphorical meaning learning. The results found that the TO targets elicited smaller N400 than the NR targets. The novel words could prime the topic words, indicating that learners could get the metaphorical meaning of newly learned words. In a word, the results of two experiments indicated that participants could get the metaphorical meaning of novel words, and the detection of the learning effect was affected by the task settings. The metaphorical meaning learning was more demanding than literal meaning learning.