Visualization Process of Perceptual Features in Language Comprehension: A Bidirectional Comparison of Chinese-English and English- Chinese Bilinguals

Comprehending words, through the theoretical perspectives of mental simulation, is thought to entail the visualization process in which human minds employ visual perceptual features to simulate individual perceptual experiences. This visualization process theoretically extracts and combines multiple perceptual features simultaneously into a simulated entity. However, experimental studies to date support only single-feature visualization processes. Thus, there exists a theoretical gap how human minds visualize words representing multiple perceptual features. Bocanegra et al. (2022) adapted the dual-feature visualization task from Potter and Faulconer (1979) that focused on color and shape as perceptual features only, to test the hypothesis of feature conjunction. This hypothesis predicted a dual-feature benefit - dual-feature word cues facilitated responses to visual targets compared to single-feature word cues - but this response benefit was only replicable under conditions of sequential presentation. Bocanegra et al. concluded that the visualization process is inherently a serial feature conjunction process. However, our pilot study using Chinese word cues detected a dual-feature advantage even under simultaneous presentation. Given that compound words constitute over 70% of Chinese lexical knowledge, it is plausible to hypothesize that comprehending Chinese words involves an immediate feature conjunction process during visualization. With a balanced evaluation of visualization processes between Chinese and English, we will enroll English-Chinese and Chinese-English bilinguals to administer Chinese and English visualization tasks in random sequence. If English and Chinese hinge on distinct feature conjunction processes, it can be predicted that the lexical knowledge of a language determines the conditions under which dual-feature benefits can be detected.