Wuerger Sophie, Xiao Kaida, Mylonas Dimitris, Huang Qingmei, Karatzas Dimosthenis, Hird Emily, Paramei Galina
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Liverpool, Bedford Street South, L69 7ZA Liverpool, UK.
J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis. 2012 Feb 1;29(2):A102-7. doi: 10.1364/JOSAA.29.00A102.
Observers are faster to detect a target among a set of distracters if the targets and distracters come from different color categories. This cross-boundary advantage seems to be limited to the right visual field, which is consistent with the dominance of the left hemisphere for language processing [Gilbert et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103, 489 (2006)]. Here we study whether a similar visual field advantage is found in the color identification task in speakers of Mandarin, a language that uses a logographic system. Forty late Mandarin-English bilinguals performed a blue-green color categorization task, in a blocked design, in their first language (L1: Mandarin) or second language (L2: English). Eleven color singletons ranging from blue to green were presented for 160 ms, randomly in the left visual field (LVF) or right visual field (RVF). Color boundary and reaction times (RTs) at the color boundary were estimated in L1 and L2, for both visual fields. We found that the color boundary did not differ between the languages; RTs at the color boundary, however, were on average more than 100 ms shorter in the English compared to the Mandarin sessions, but only when the stimuli were presented in the RVF. The finding may be explained by the script nature of the two languages: Mandarin logographic characters are analyzed visuospatially in the right hemisphere, which conceivably facilitates identification of color presented to the LVF.
如果目标物和干扰物来自不同的颜色类别，观察者在一组干扰物中检测目标物的速度会更快。这种跨边界优势似乎仅限于右视野，这与左半球在语言处理方面的主导地位是一致的[吉尔伯特等人，《美国国家科学院院刊》103, 489 (2006)]。在这里，我们研究在使用表意文字系统的汉语使用者的颜色识别任务中是否也能发现类似的视野优势。40名晚期汉英双语者以分组设计的方式，用他们的第一语言（L1：汉语）或第二语言（L2：英语）执行蓝绿色分类任务。从蓝色到绿色的11个颜色单一刺激物随机出现在左视野（LVF）或右视野（RVF）中，呈现160毫秒。针对两个视野，分别在L1和L2中估计颜色边界以及颜色边界处的反应时间（RTs）。我们发现，两种语言之间的颜色边界没有差异；然而，颜色边界处的反应时间，与汉语测试相比，在英语测试中平均要短100多毫秒，但这仅在刺激物呈现在右视野时才出现。这一发现可能由两种语言的文字性质来解释：汉语表意文字在右半球进行视觉空间分析，这可以想象会促进对呈现给左视野的颜色的识别。
