| Abstrakt: |
The present study examines the perceptual process of short English sentences by Japanese learners. Specifically, it attempts to describe (a) the extent to which Japanese learners can process bottom-up information (and also the factors which affect word recognition process), and (b) the extent to which they can utilize top-down (grammatical) information. The research was conducted using a gating paradigm (Bard et al. 1988; Grosjean, 1980, 1985, 1996), focusing on recognition of words in the utterances. Responses by Japanese learners and also native English speakers to nine short English sentences were examined. The results suggest that the recognition of words by Japanese learners is affected by sound reduction, unfamiliar segments, word-class, word-length, word position in a sentence, and familiarity with the words. Another finding of the research was that the ability of Japanese learners to utilize top-down (grammatical) information is not well-developed and that for them sentence comprehension tends to be determined by the success or failure of bottom-up processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
