1　Introduction

This section discusses the research background and significance of integrating Chinese culture into English test reading texts, pointing out that current research focuses more on textbook compilation with less attention to the testing field. Existing empirical studies have shown that cultural integration has a positive impact on reading comprehension outcomes, but there is a lack of in-depth exploration of its effects on cognitive processes. This study intends to use the think-aloud method to compare and analyze the influence mechanisms of British/American culture and Chinese culture texts on learners' cognitive processing activities.

2　Literature Review

This section reviews the theoretical framework of reading cognitive processing activities and the current research status on the influence of textual cultural characteristics on reading comprehension. Regarding reading cognitive processing, based on Khalifa & Weir's (2009) model, reading cognitive processing activities encompass three levels: lower-order cognition, higher-order cognition, and metacognitive activities, with learners employing cognitive and metacognitive strategies to complete comprehension tasks. Regarding the influence mechanisms of textual cultural characteristics, existing research mainly unfolds from two levels: textual structure and textual content. This study focuses on the textual content level, adopting Adaskou et al.'s (1990) cultural classification framework to define cultural characteristics from social, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions. In terms of research methodology, the "cultural nativization" approach effectively controls interference from textual language and structural variables by replacing foreign cultural elements with learners' native cultural expressions. Existing research has shown that cultural nativization has positive effects on inferential comprehension, but current studies mostly focus on reading comprehension outcomes with insufficient exploration of cognitive processing processes, and lack comparative analysis of learners at different proficiency levels as well as detailed examination of specific cognitive activities at different reading levels. Based on this, this study adopts the think-aloud method to explore lower-order cognitive processing, higher-order cognitive processing, and metacognitive activities of English learners at different proficiency levels when reading texts with different cultural characteristics.

3　Research Design

This study employed purposive sampling to select 12 sophomore students as participants, divided them into low, intermediate, and high proficiency levels based on CET-4 scores, and randomly assigned them to two groups to read British/American culture and Chinese culture texts respectively. The experimental materials consisted of two types of texts with different cultural characteristics. The researcher referred to Alptekin's "cultural nativization" method to construct a nativization framework, replacing explicit cultural elements in British/American culture texts with Chinese cultural elements while retaining deep cultural concepts that were difficult to nativize, and verified the comparability of the two types of texts in textual features through the Coh-Metrix tool. Data collection adopted the think-aloud method, including three steps: training, formal experiment, and retrospective interview, ultimately forming over 120,000 words of transcribed text. Data analysis employed content analysis, coding reading strategies into cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies, and corresponding them to lower-order cognitive processing, higher-order cognitive processing, and metacognitive monitoring activities according to Khalifa & Weir's reading cognitive process model. Inter-rater reliability was ensured through independent coding by two coders and discussion, and chi-square tests were used to analyze group differences in strategy use frequency.

4　Results and Discussion

This section discusses the influence of textual cultural characteristics on lower-order cognitive processing, higher-order cognitive processing, and metacognitive activities of English learners at different proficiency levels. Regarding lower-order cognitive processing, low-proficiency learners in the British/American culture group used vocabulary comprehension and propositional meaning construction strategies significantly more frequently than those in the Chinese culture group, as their unfamiliarity with British/American cultural elements increased vocabulary cognitive load; while there were no significant differences between the two groups for intermediate and high-proficiency learners, indicating that literal comprehension is mainly driven by L2 proficiency. Regarding higher-order cognitive processing, learners at all three proficiency levels in the Chinese culture group used more strategies, particularly excelling in constructing situational and textual representations, as familiar culture can effectively activate background knowledge schemata; high-proficiency learners actually used fewer strategies than intermediate-proficiency learners, possibly because their processing became more implicit; low-proficiency learners dynamically shifted between successful and erroneous inferences due to vocabulary knowledge constraints, corroborating the "language threshold hypothesis." Regarding metacognitive activities, low and intermediate-proficiency learners in the British/American culture group used strategies more frequently, but these were mostly compensatory strategies under cultural comprehension obstacles; there were no significant differences between the two groups for high-proficiency learners, as some monitoring strategies had become automatized. The comprehensive findings indicate that L2 learners' cognitive processing concentrates on lower-order levels, Chinese culture texts can promote higher-order cognitive processing, and it is recommended to integrate Chinese culture into reading materials to optimize comprehension effects.

5　Conclusion

This study explored the influence of English textual cultural characteristics on cognitive processing of learners at different proficiency levels, finding that low-proficiency learners tended to use lower-order cognitive strategies when reading British/American culture texts, while all learners employed more higher-order cognitive strategies when reading Chinese culture texts. Based on this, the study recommends that test designers organically integrate Chinese culture into reading texts, select texts with cross-cultural commonality, and appropriately increase the propositional requirements for inferential comprehension to promote students' use of higher-order cognitive strategies and deep-level reading comprehension. The study also acknowledges limitations including the failure to examine implicit cultural characteristics and to distinguish between language and cultural knowledge levels.