Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Using a revised reaction time technique, four experiments were conducted to probe into the role of Chinese characters’ Yifu in cognition of Chinese action verbs’ meaning. Experiment 1 explored the effects of Yifu on the cognition of action organ’s meaning of action verbs. The results showed that the Yifu which is in consistent with action organs promoted the cognition of the verbs’ meaning of action organs, while the Yifu which incongruous with action organs inhabited the cognition of the verbs’ meaning of action organs. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of Yifu on recognizing of the meaning of action verb’s action tools. The results showed that when Yifu is in consistent with action tools would advance the cognition of the meaning of action verbs’ action tools; while they were inconsistent with each other would inhabited the cognition of the meaning of action webs’ action tools. Experiment 3 probed into whether or not the role of Yifu varied with frequencies of the words. The results showed that when Yifu is in consistent with the action organs, there weren’t notable differences between the cognition of high frequency words and that of low frequency words; while they were inconsistent with each other, the cognition of the action organ’s meaning of high frequency words were speeder than that of low frequency words. Experiment 4 explored the effects of whether or not Yifu is inconsistent with action organs on the cognition of action organ’s meaning of action verbs which were different in concreteness. The results showed that when Yifu is in consistent with the action organs, there weren’t remarkable differences between the cognition of high concrete words and that of low concrete words; when they were inconsistent with each other, the cognition of action organ’s meaning of high concrete words was faster than that of low concrete words. The whole study indicated the structure characteristics of Chinese words affected the cognition of the meaning of action organs or tools.

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