Sun Danning, Chen Zihan, Zhu Shanhua
School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
J Psycholinguist Res. 2025 Feb 26;54(2):9. doi: 10.1007/s10936-025-10125-9.
This study examines the referential context effect on second-language relative clause ambiguity resolution by proficient L1 Chinese learners who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) and investigates whether the ambiguity resolution process is constrained by individuals' working memory capacity (WMC). It presents a self-paced reading study and investigates L2 relative clauses ambiguity resolution in two phases. The baseline phase probes Chinese EFL learners' initial attachment preference when comprehending global ambiguous sentences without referential context. In the further experimental phases, each target sentence is preceded by a referential context with either neutral or NP-biasing information. We observe the change in reaction time spent on processing sentences and answering comprehension questions. Results showed that firstly regardless of WMC, proficient Chinese EFL learners employed a high-attachment parsing strategy when there was no referential context. Secondly, referential context facilitated sentence processing and comprehension, as demonstrated by decreased reaction times in critical region and on comprehension questions from neutral to biased contexts, with no significant difference in accuracy rates. Notably, the contextual effect was more pronounced when high-attachment contextual cues were present. Thirdly, working memory capacity modulated the ambiguity resolution process. Participants with different WMCs showed different parsing behaviors, and this difference manifested itself in both the interpretive and post-interpretive stages of processing. Participants with lower WMC had limited cognitive resources for processing ambiguous sentences, whereas those with larger WMC were more adept at resolving ambiguity in a context-dependent manner. These findings offer new insights into L2 shallow sentence processing as well as WMC constraints in L2 ambiguity resolution.
本研究考察了以中文为母语的熟练英语学习者（将英语作为外语学习，即EFL）在第二语言关系从句歧义消解中的指称语境效应，并探究了歧义消解过程是否受到个体工作记忆容量（WMC）的限制。研究采用了自定步速阅读研究方法，分两个阶段探究第二语言关系从句的歧义消解。基线阶段探究中国EFL学习者在理解无指称语境的全局歧义句时最初的附着偏好。在后续实验阶段，每个目标句子之前都有一个带有中性或名词短语偏向信息的指称语境。我们观察处理句子和回答理解问题所花费的反应时间的变化。结果表明，首先，无论工作记忆容量如何，熟练的中国EFL学习者在没有指称语境时都采用高附着解析策略。其次，指称语境促进了句子处理和理解，从无偏向语境到有偏向语境，关键区域和理解问题上反应时间的减少证明了这一点，准确率没有显著差异。值得注意的是，当存在高附着语境线索时，语境效应更为明显。第三，工作记忆容量调节了歧义消解过程。不同工作记忆容量的参与者表现出不同的解析行为，这种差异在处理的解释性和后解释性阶段都有体现。工作记忆容量较低的参与者处理歧义句的认知资源有限，而工作记忆容量较大的参与者更善于以依赖语境的方式消解歧义。这些发现为第二语言浅层句子处理以及第二语言歧义消解中的工作记忆容量限制提供了新的见解。
