The Role of the Motor System in L1 and L2 Action Verb Processing for Chinese Learners of English: Evidence from Mu Rhythm Desynchronization.

The nature of semantic representation has long been a key question in linguistic research. The Embodied Cognition theory challenges the traditional view of language representation, stating that semantic information stems from the sensory-motor cortex, which is activated automatically during semantic processing. However, most of the evidence comes from monolingual studies; it remains unclear whether second-language (L2) comprehension involves different semantic representations or mirrors the pattern seen in first-language (L1) processing.

The concrete processing of Chinese action metaphors: an ERP study.

The present research adopts ERP (Event-Related Potentials) technology to investigate whether there exists a concreteness effect in the processing of Chinese action verbs within metaphorical context. The mean amplitudes of N400 activated by action metaphors were compared with those activated by literal verbs and abstract verbs. The findings indicated that the Met verbs evoked a significantly larger N400 response at frontal brain region compared to the Abs verbs at a time window 200-500 ms, while the Met verbs elicited a notably greater N400 amplitude specifically at the posterior brain region in comparison to the Lit verbs at 300-500 ms time window.

An empirical study on the development of metaphorical comprehension of Chinese children.

Metaphor affects how people focus, remember, and process information and significantly influences children's language development. The study explored metaphorical comprehension by Chinese children of different ages (5-8 years). We collected response times and accuracy rates when they processed metaphorical and literal sentences with the graded salience.

Masked Translation Priming With Concreteness of Cross-Script Cognates in Visual Word Recognition by Chinese Learners of English: An ERP Study.

Translation equivalents for cognates in different script systems share the same meaning and phonological similarity but are different orthographically. Event-related potentials were recorded during the visual recognition of cross-script cognates and non-cognates together with concreteness factors while Chinese learners of English performed a lexical decision task with the masked translation priming paradigm in Experiment 1 (forward translation: L1-L2) and Experiment 2 (backward translation: L2-L1). N400 effect was found to be closely related to priming effects of cross-script cognate status and concreteness in Experiment 1; and in Experiment 2, N150 and N400 effects were related to priming effects of cross-script cognate status and concreteness, and greater priming effects of cross-script cognate status in cognates than in non-cognates for abstract words were found in the time window of 100-200 ms.