| Summary: | 博士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系博士班 === 97 === This thesis on the cognitive effect of garden-path (GP) sentences investigates the Principle-based Approach used by intermediate and advanced EFL learners reading sentences embedded with subject-reduced and object-reduced relative constructions. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to examine the delayed sentence comprehension processing caused by garden-path attachment ambiguity. In both types of relative constructions, each final critical word was presented on the screen at the same time to subjects. Based on dipole density analysis, both the left and the right temporal areas were involved in the responses to the experimental sentences. For the purposes of analysis, the dipole numbers in the latency shift from 300 to 900 ms were divided into three time windows. For the experiment of Session I, the t-test revealed a significant difference (p= 0.0246) between the responses of the two proficiency groups to garden-path sentences at 300-500 ms in the right hemisphere. However, a paired t-test revealed a significant difference (p=0.026) in the activation of the left and the right temporal areas in the advanced group at 700-900 ms. For the experiment of Session II, the t-test showed a significant difference (p=0.0189) at 700-900 ms in the left temporal area between the two groups’ responses to the GP experimental sentences. Finally, in comparing the results of Session I and Session II, the t-test showed that there was a significant difference (p=0.008) at 300-500 ms in the right temporal area in the advanced group’s responses to the two different types of GP sentences in the sessions. This indicates that the degree of difficulty of GP sentences in Session II was greater than that of Session I. Sigma Plot analysis was used to investigate the mean amplitudes in the time window from 150 to 300 ms. In the detection of the differences between GP and Non-GP sentences, two significant differences were found in the two sessions. The paired t-test results of Session I demonstrated that there was a significant difference (p< 0.05) in the intermediate group’s responses to GP and to Non-GP sentences in the time window from 150 to 300 ms. As for the inter-group variability, it was found that in Session II there was a significant difference (p< 0.05) in the right temporal area in both time windows between the two groups’ responses to sentences with the GP effect. A significant difference in the M300 component was found in the responses of different EFL proficiency groups towards GP sentences. The MEG results prove that the ambiguity in GP sentences causes a reanalysis over time. In the results of these two sessions, it was seen that, although both the left and right temporal areas were activated to different degrees in response to restrictive relative constructions, the subjects’ detection of the difference between GP and Non-GP sentences was mainly in the right temporal area. It is thus concluded that higher proficiency indicates a higher degree of consistency in using a serial parsing strategy, greater tolerance to work with problems like the GP effect, and a greater degree of certainty as shown by the mean amplitudes.
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