The Effect of Visuospatial Working Memory on ESL Listening Mental Model Construction
Visuospatial ability refers to the ability to establish mental representation through spatial description of time,space,cause-effect,characters,objects,etc.ESL listening comprehension requires higher cognitive flexibility,hence visuospatial working memory contributes greatly to forming a spatial mental model for effective comprehension of auditory text.To explore the effect of visuospatial working memory on listening comprehension of ESL learners,this paper,through sentence-picture matching experi-mental paradigm,examined the discrepancy in accuracy and reaction time of visuospatial working memory among non-English ma-jors at various English listening proficiency levels,under different stimuli conditions of processing loads(low load,high load)and information presenting types(object-precedence,space-precedence).The experiment indicated,(1)visuospatial working memory significantly correlated with listening proficiency;(2)there existed significant discrepancy in visuospatial working memory capaci-ty among different listening proficiency levels.High-proficiency listeners significantly outperformed low-proficiency listeners in both accuracy and reaction time;the discrepancy between high-and intermediate-levels emerged in reaction time while interme-diate-and low-levels in accuracy;(3)the main effects of processing loads and information presenting types were both significant,with significantly higher accuracy as well as shorter reaction time under low load and space-precedence conditions than their coun-terparts.Also,the interaction effect between processing loads and information presenting types occurred,where space-precedence had prominent processing superiority under low load.This study,as an in-depth examination of a working memory subcomponent,expects to have implications for researches on mechanism of mental representation in listening comprehension.
visuospatial working memoryprocessing loadsinformation presenting typeslistening comprehensionmental model
万方数据
维普
