The More Flexible You Are, the Faster You Can Understand Sentences

Abstract

Abstract: The present study investigated the relationship between cognitive flexibility and sentence comprehension. Forty-seven college students completed the Wisconsin card sorting test, the syntactic-semantic flexibility task and the sentence affirmation task. After controlling for the role of gender, the regression analysis showed that: 1) General cognitive flexibility only predicted latencies of affirmative sentence comprehension. Syntactic-semantic flexibility predicted latencies of affirmative, negative, double negative, triple negative and rhetorical sentence comprehension. 2) The predictive effect of syntactic-semantic flexibility on latencies of affirmative sentence comprehension was greater than that of general cognitive flexibility. 3) The predictive effect of syntactic-semantic flexibility on latencies of affirmative rhetorical sentence comprehension was greater than on that of negative rhetorical sentence comprehension. In summary, syntactic-semantic flexibility contributes more to latencies of sentence comprehension than general cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, cognitive flexibility produces different predictive effects on latencies of different sentence comprehension.

Key words: cognitive flexibility, syntactic-semantic flexibility, sentence comprehension, negation

摘要： 采用威斯康星卡片分类测验、语法–语义灵活性任务和语义肯定性任务，以47名大学生为研究对象，考察一般认知灵活性、语法–语义灵活性与句子理解的关系。控制性别作用后，回归分析结果显示：（1）一般认知灵活性只显著预测一般肯定句理解速度，语法–语义灵活性显著预测一般肯定、一般否定、肯定反问、否定反问、双重否定和三重否定句理解速度；（2）语法–语义灵活性比一般认知灵活性对一般肯定句理解速度的预测作用更大；（3）语法–语义灵活性对肯定反问句比对否定反问句理解速度的预测作用更大。这表明语法–语义灵活性比一般认知灵活性对句子理解速度的贡献更大，且认知灵活性对不同句式句子理解速度的影响不同。

关键词: 认知灵活性, 语法–语义灵活性, 句子理解, 否定

CLC Number:

B842

QI Bing, LI Qiuying, LI Yuwei, SONG Yaowu. The More Flexible You Are, the Faster You Can Understand Sentences[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2020, 18(5): 577-582.

齐冰, 李秋莹, 李雨薇, 宋耀武. 认知越灵活，句子理解越快?[J]. 心理与行为研究, 2020, 18(5): 577-582.

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