本研究利用掩蔽启动范式探讨了中国英语学习者如何加工英语当中规则动词过去式的问题。结果表明,在较高词频屈折词加工的早期辨认阶段,高水平英语学习者可以利用词素规则对屈折词进行分解,而低水平组则不可以。另外,研究还发现屈折词的词频也会影响词素加工。实验结果支持双机制理论(陈述一程序记忆模型)。
The involvement of rule-based computation is the focus of the past tense debate. The present masked priming study contributed to the debate by investigating how Chinese EFL learners processed regular English past tense forms. The results show that, for the past tense forms of relatively high frequency, at the early stage of processing, the highly proficient group can make use of morphological rule to decompose regular past tense forms. The lower proficiency level group, however, cannot decompose past tense forms. It is suggested that surface form frequency of past tense inflections and foreign language proficiency are the two factors that affect the way complex words are processed. Our data supports the dual-route model of Declarative-Procedural memory in the past tense debate.