On March 25, 2024, Professor Marcus Taft, a specially invited professor of the base and a retired professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia, arrived at the base to conduct a one-month academic exchange and cooperation.
I. Delivering an International Course for Graduate Students
On March 29, Professor Marcus Taft began delivering his international course for graduate students titled "Experimental Design and Research." The first lecture was themed "Researching the Cognitive Psychology of Language," presided over by Associate Researcher Yang Qun from the base, with teachers and students from the base participating in the course.
Professor Taft mainly introduced the cognitive representations and models in the process of language learning. He first raised the question of how to determine whether an English word has a prefix, and then explained the process of judging words from both formal and cognitive perspectives, introducing related experiments. Finally, Professor Taft extended the relevant experiments to "how to identify Chinese characters" and proposed a cognitive model for processing Chinese characters. He emphasized the regulatory role of "Lemmas" between the form and function of Chinese characters, while connecting the font and pronunciation of Chinese characters. During the Q&A session, teachers and students actively asked questions and engaged in lively discussions. The course was both relaxed and interesting, informative and practical, broadening the research ideas and academic horizons of teachers and students, and providing new research methods.
II. Invited to Attend the Base Teacher-Student Seminar
On April 2, the base held an academic seminar for teachers and students, and Professor Taft was invited to participate. The seminar was presided over by Associate Researcher Yang Qun from the base, with Professor Wang Jianqin, the director of the base, and several other teachers attending.
During the seminar, three graduate students shared their recent research. Doctoral student Hao Yuanyuan presented a report titled "How Conventionality, Context, and Working Memory Influence Chinese Metaphor Processing: Evidence from ERP," discussing research background, current issues, and methodology, and proposing research hypotheses and experimental plans. Master's student Chen Xinyi's report was titled "Does Word Order Background Affect Chinese L2 Learners' Non-canonical Sentence Comprehension?—An fMRI study," exploring the influence of second language learners' native language background on their understanding of non-canonical Chinese sentences through two progressive experiments. Master's student Wang Qiong presented a report titled "The Influence of Contextual Information on Metaphorical Processing Mechanism," introducing the use of fMRI technology to explore the influence of context containing target domain features and source domain features on the understanding of metaphor among native Chinese speakers.
Professor Taft and the teachers of the base engaged in lively discussions on the content of the students' reports, offering many valuable suggestions on experimental design, experimental materials, and research paradigms.
Professor Taft delivered a closing speech, expressing his pleasure in participating in the seminar and his deep impression of the excellent reports by the students. The participating teachers and students expressed that they had benefited greatly from the discussion.
