Ferretti Todd R, Kutas Marta, McRae Ken
Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2007 Jan;33(1):182-96. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.33.1.182.
The authors show that verb aspect influences the activation of event knowledge with 4 novel results. First, common locations of events (e.g., arena) are primed following verbs with imperfective aspect (e.g., was skating) but not verbs with perfect aspect (e.g., had skated). Second, people generate more locative prepositional phrases as completions to sentence fragments with imperfective than those with perfect aspect. Third, the amplitude of the N400 component to location nouns varies as a function of aspect and typicality, being smallest for imperfective sentences with highly expected locations and largest for imperfective sentences with less expected locations. Fourth, the amplitude of a sustained frontal negativity spanning prepositional phrases is larger following perfect than following imperfective aspect. Taken together, these findings suggest a dynamic interplay between event knowledge and the linguistic stream.
作者们通过4个新发现表明动词时态会影响事件知识的激活。首先，具有未完成体时态的动词（如“was skating”）之后会启动事件的常见地点（如“竞技场”），而具有完成体时态的动词（如“had skated”）之后则不会。其次，与具有完成体时态的句子片段相比，人们用更多的方位介词短语来完成具有未完成体时态的句子片段。第三，N400成分对地点名词的波幅会根据时态和典型性而变化，对于具有高度预期地点的未完成体句子最小，对于具有较低预期地点的未完成体句子最大。第四，在完成体时态之后，跨越介词短语的持续额叶负波的波幅比在未完成体时态之后更大。综合来看，这些发现表明事件知识与语言流之间存在动态相互作用。
