Lexian Shen’s research while affiliated with Anhui Polytechnic University and other places

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Publications (3)


Experimental paradigm of experiment 1.
Grand average event-related potential (ERP) waveforms recorded at the 9 chosen electrodes of Chinese pairs.
Experimental paradigm of experiment 2.
Grand average ERP waveforms recorded at the nine chosen electrodes of English pairs.
Grand average ERP waveforms recorded at the Pz electrodes of four conditions

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Comprehending scientific metaphors in the bilingual brain: Evidence from event-related potentials
  • Article
  • Full-text available

December 2022

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88 Reads

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3 Citations

Lexian Shen

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Xiaoguang Li

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Shaojuan Huang

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While the processing mechanisms of novel and conventional metaphors were widely investigated in previous monolingual studies, little attention has been devoted to how metaphoric utterances are processed by the bilingual brain as well as how scientific context might modulate such processes. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), this paper investigates the way in which scientific metaphors are electrophysiologically processed in Chinese (L1) and English (L2), with the aim of investigating the different mechanisms for understanding metaphorical language in first (L1) and second (L2) languages. By time-locking the N400 and later LPC time windows, the research show how meaning integration differs between L1 and L2 at different stages when comprehending figurative language. We found that compared with Chinese scientific metaphors, English scientific metaphors elicited greater N400, smaller late positive component (LPC), and greater late negativity, and English literals elicited greater late negativity. Our findings suggest that the dynamics of processing figurative meaning in bilingual brains over time show a complex pattern, with language, context, inference and salience jointly modulating temporal dynamics and possible cerebral asymmetries, supporting the revised hierarchical model.

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Bilingual Processing Mechanisms of Scientific Metaphors and Conventional Metaphors: Evidence via a Contrastive Event-Related Potentials Study

June 2022

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122 Reads

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4 Citations

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language (L1) and their second language (L2), this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese (L1) and English (L2) are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window (300–500 ms), English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. In the late positive component (LPC) time window (550–800 ms), English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings.


Hemispheric Processing of Chinese Scientific Metaphors: Evidence via Hemifield Presentation

May 2022

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63 Reads

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4 Citations

The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. In order to complement current debates, the current divided visual field (DVF) study introduced scientific metaphors as novel metaphors, presenting orientation mapping from the specific and familiar domains to the abstract and unfamiliar domains, to examine hemispheric asymmetry in metaphoric processing. Twenty-four Chinese native speakers from science disciplines took part in the experiment. The participants were presented with four types of Chinese word pairs: scientific metaphors, conventional metaphors, literal word pairs, and unrelated word pairs. The first word in each pair was presented centrally, and the second was presented to the left visual field (the Right Hemisphere) or the right visual field (the Left Hemisphere). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants read the target words and judged whether words in each pair were related. The data demonstrated that both hemispheres were involved at the initial stage of metaphor processing, but the right hemisphere took a more privileged role. The significant activation of the left hemisphere for scientific metaphoric processing supports the fine-coarse coding hypothesis. During right-visual-field presentation, the left hemisphere, responsible for the processing of closely related domains, has to integrate the loosely associated domains of scientific metaphor, which greatly increased cognitive taxes. Moreover, the data of late positive components (LPCs) revealed different hemispheric activation between scientific metaphors and conventional metaphors. Compared with literal pairs, conventional metaphors elicited significantly higher LPCs during right visual field presentation, while the scientific metaphor elicited significantly lower LPCs during left visual field presentation. These results suggest different processing mechanisms between novel metaphors and conventional metaphors and the special role of the right hemisphere in novel metaphoric processing at the later mapping stage.

Citations (3)


... The lateralized N170 could be attributed to the distinct orthographic information across languages [43]; [44]. As for the N400 component, English exhibits a weaker and/or longer N400 compared to Chinese [33,45]. Chinese-English bilinguals, compared to English monolinguals, demonstrate a reduced N400 response for English word pairs that shared a character in their Chinese translation [46]. ...

Reference:

Electrophysiological evidence of lexical processing impacted by foreign language reading anxiety
Comprehending scientific metaphors in the bilingual brain: Evidence from event-related potentials

... This is because they have difficulty accessing the less salient metaphorical meanings in their non-dominant language. Several electrophysiological studies have suggested that L2 metaphor comprehension is less sensitive to the conventionality of metaphors than L1 metaphor comprehension (Jankowiak et al. 2017;Tang et al. 2022;Wang and Jankowiak, 2023). This difference is attributed to the low frequency of daily use of L2 metaphors. ...

Bilingual Processing Mechanisms of Scientific Metaphors and Conventional Metaphors: Evidence via a Contrastive Event-Related Potentials Study

... They observed that the N400 elicited by novel metaphoric expressions was enhanced compared to that elicited by conventional metaphoric expressions. The N400 amplitude difference between novel metaphor and conventional metaphor is consistently observed (Arzouan et al., 2007b;Lai et al., 2009;Goldstein et al., 2012;Tang et al., 2017a,b;Huang et al., 2022), with few exceptions (Pynte et al., 1996;Lai and Curran, 2013). Consistent observations were reported in fMRI studies, which suggested that conventionality can modulate metaphor comprehension (Cardillo et al., 2012;Horvat et al., 2022). ...

Hemispheric Processing of Chinese Scientific Metaphors: Evidence via Hemifield Presentation