CUHK electronic theses & dissertations collection

In study III, two event-related-potential (ERP) experiments show a clear modulation from preceding object noun on the early ERP components of the following object picture that are known to be associated with perceptual processes and provide by far the strongest evidence that semantic processing cannot account fully for the congruence effects supposed to indicate color representation.In summary, color representaion is found to be present not only for color information implied by the global phrase context but also for color information irrelevant to the global phrase context, not only for words with direct and concrete associations with color but also for words where such associations are indirect and less concrete. ERP results also provide strong support that color simulation does occur at the perceptual level as argued by embodied cognition theorists and cannot be attributed totally to semantic processing. Briefly, the present research provides a rich dataset and valuable insights deepening the understanding of perceptual color simulation in phrase and words.Results from all three experiments in the first study showed a robust demonstration of the activation of perceptual representation of color information or the presence of color simulation in phase processing. Results from primetarget stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) manipulation provided time course information of the relative activation of the two types of colors.The present research was conducted to give a systematic treatment of color simulation in language processing to enrich understanding of perceptual simulation. Two main questions have been addressed here, namely 'what is the time course of color activation in language unites such as noun phrase and abstract words? ' and 'do linguistic simulation and perceptual simulation (especially the unconscious part) of color co-exist in language understanding? 'The second study involving three experiments, further extended the finding in Study I to demonstrate the presence of color simulation to an even smaller and abstracter linguistic unit of single words. Results from SOA manipulation indicates a more rapid activation of color information for the words psychologically-related to color, followed by activation of color for object nouns, and slowest color activation for verbs.Lu, AitaoAdviser: Wai Chan.Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-11, Section: B, page: .Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-99).Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.Abstract also in Chinese; some appendices include Chinese characters