The processing of semantic radicals in Chinese character identification: evidence from ERP studies

Symposium 9 - Character and word processing: 3According to Weekes and Chen (2004) and Chen et al. (2006), semantic knowledge encoded in the radical (subcomponents) influences Chinese character identification. A series of three investigations addressed the effects of semantic radical properties on the time course of character processing during ...postprintThe 13th International Conference on the Processing of East Asian Languages (ICPEAL), Beijing, China, 9-11 October 2009. In Program Book of the 13th ICPEAL, 2009, p. 45-4

Semantic radical consistency and character transparency effects in Chinese: an ERP study

BACKGROUND: This event-related potential (ERP) study aims to investigate the representation and temporal dynamics of Chinese orthography-to-semantics mappings by simultaneously manipulating character transparency and semantic radical consistency. Character components, referred to as radicals, make up the building blocks used dur...postprin

Another sub-lexical unit of representation in reading Chinese? The logographeme number effect

Poster Session D - Orthographic Processing, Writing, Spelling: no. D36Studies of Chinese character recognition have demonstrated widely that complex characters are automatically decomposed into sub-lexical components referred to as radicals during reading and writing in Chinese. Yet, an issue raised by Yang et al., (2009) was that it is unclear how the orthographic sub-system in during character recognition is able to differentiate when the sub-lexical unit “口” in characters such as 呵 should be activated as a radical for the left side unit, but not for the right radical 可 which also embeds a 口 within the radical. Studies of writing errors of Chinese children and aphasic patients argue that logographemes, a smaller sub-lexical unit than ...postprin

Delineating picture and Chinese Character recognition: an ERP approach

Poster Session A - Orthographic Processing, Writing, Spelling: no. A21The logographic nature of the Chinese script has often been compared to alphabet scripts and argued that more visual-spatial analysis is required, given that character components are arranged in a fixed square shape (Tan et al., 2001). The analogy between characters and pictographs or line-drawings has led to some discussion of whether the two are similar or distinct in visual-spatial analysis particularly in the right occipital hemisphere (e.g. Yum et al., 2012; Zhang, et al., 2011). Using ERP’s method, this study aimed to address whether visual-spatial analysis of characters is dissociable from line drawings, particularly focusing at the initial occipital P100 ...postprin

Interactive effects of orthography and semantics in Chinese picture naming

Posters - Language Production/Writing: abstract no. 4035Picture-naming performance in English and Dutch is enhanced by presentation of a word that is similar in form to the picture name. However, it is unclear whether facilitation has an orthographic or a phonological locus. We investigated the loci of the facilitation effect in Cantonese Chinese speakers by manipulating—at three SOAs (2100, 0, and 1100 msec)—semantic, orthographic, and phonological similarity. We identified an effect of orthographic facilitation that was independent of and larger than phonological facilitation across all SOAs. Semantic interference was also found at SOAs of 2100 and 0 msec. Critically, an interaction of semantics and orthography was observed at an SOA of 1100 msec. This interaction suggests that independent effects of orthographic facilitation on picture naming are located either at the level of semantic processing or at the lemma level and are not due to the activation of picture name segments at the level of phonological retrieval.postprin

Awareness of form-sound correspondence in Chinese children with dyslexia: Preliminary results from event-related potentials and time frequency analyses

Developmental dyslexia has usually been characterized as having difficulties learning grapheme-phoneme correspondence and applying the mappings. This study investigates form-sound awareness in Chinese reading-impaired children in terms of regularity, consistency and lexicality effects using event-related potentials (ERP) and time-frequency analysis (TFA). Preliminary data from two Cantonese-speaking male children, one with reading impairment (PR) and one with normal reading performance (CA), performing a character recognition task were collected. ERP results indicated that CA showed a lexicality effect at N400 that was not evident in PR. TFA showed that CA exhibited greater event-related synchronization (ERS) and phase coherence at theta and gamma bands suggesting greater cognitive demand in processing pseudo and irregular characters. An opposite pattern was observed for PR, where greater effort was needed to retrieve information related to real and regular characters whilst failing to respond to pseudo and irregular characters. Greater ERS and phase coherence was also observed for real, pseudo and regular characters at 350-450ms at theta suggesting adequate access to phonological and semantic information for CA compared to PR. Whereas PR showed greater ERS and phase coherence at earlier and later time intervals. These initial findings suggest that PR may have weaker semantic representations and may be less sensitive to the internal structure of characters and its relationship with sounds. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

An ERP study of effects of regularity and consistency in delayed naming and lexicality judgment in a logographic writing system

Phonological access is an important component in theories and models of word reading. However, phonological regularity and consistency effects are not clearly separable in alphabetic writing systems. We investigated these effects in Chinese, where the two variables are operationally distinct. In this orthographic system, regularity is defined as the congruence between the pronunciation of a complex character (or phonogram), and that of its phonetic radical, while phonological consistency indexes the proportion of orthographic neighbors that share the same pronunciation as the phonogram. In the current investigation, regularity and consistency were contrasted in an event-related potential (ERP) study using a lexical decision task and a delayed naming task with native Chinese readers. ERP results showed that effects of regularity occurred early after stimulus onset and were long-lasting. Regular characters elicited larger N170, smaller P200, and larger N400 compared to irregular characters. In contrast, significant effects of consistency were only seen at the P200 and consistent characters showed a greater P200 than inconsistent characters. Thus, both the time course and the direction of the effects indicated that regularity and consistency operated under different mechanisms and were distinct constructs. Additionally, both of these phonological effects were only found in the delayed naming task and absent in lexical decision, suggesting that phonological access was non-obligatory for lexical decision. The study demonstrated cross-language variability in how phonological information was accessed from print and how task demands could influence this process.published_or_final_versio

Near-merger in Hong Kong Cantonese tones: a behavioural and ERP study

Near-merger is a recalcitrant phenomenon in sound change in which speakers are able to differentiate two sounds in production but consistently report that they are the same in perception. This phenomenon challenges the dominant models of phonological processing, and raises methodological questions whether speakers’ judgment can truly reflect their ability to discriminate speech sounds. The present study attempts to provide a thorough assessment of this intriguing phenomenon through performing behavioural and ERP studies on the perception of a tonal contrast (T4/T6) in Hong Kong Cantonese which has been reported to exhibit near-merger in previous studies. The behavioural study adopts auditory discrimination and oral production tasks, whereas the ERP study employs passive oddball task to elicit MMNs. Preliminary findings showed that the results of ERP measures were consistent with that of the behavioural measures. MMNs were found in participants who could discriminate the two tones whereas no MMN was found in participants who failed to discriminate them behaviourally. These initial observations are not only consistent with the existence of near-merger, but also mark the beginning of research efforts into understanding this baffling phenomenon.postprint第3届语言音调方面国际研讨会 (TAL 2012),中国, 南京, 2012年5月26-29日.The 3rd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2012), Nanjing, China, 26-29 May 2012

Distinctive effects of regularity and consistency in orthography-phonology mapping in a logographic writing system: an ERP study

Poster Session E - Motor Control, Speech Production, Sensorimotor Integration: no. E23In alphabetic scripts, phonological regularity and consistency of print-to-sound mapping are not clearly separable. In contrast, these variables are operationally distinct in Chinese. About 80% of Chinese characters are phonograms, containing a semantic radical that provides a clue to the meaning of the character and a phonetic radical providing a clue to the pronunciation (e.g. 趾 zi2 ‘toe’ has a semantic radical 足meaning ‘foot’ and a phonetic radical 止 zi2). The orthographyphonology mapping in Chinese can be characterized in terms of regularity defined as the congruence between the pronunciation of a phonogram and that of its phonetic radical, and ...postprin

Learning to read a logographic writing system as a second language: an ERP study of L2 Chinese proficient readers

Poster Session E - Language Development, Plasticity, Multilingualism: no. E33For native readers of alphabetic scripts, learning to read a logographic system such as Chinese is challenging. This is not only because Chinese characters look drastically unlike from words in alphabetic scripts, but also because mappings between orthographic and phonological units in the two systems are different. In this study, we investigated two measures of orthography-phonology mapping-- phonological regularity and consistency--in relatively proficient late-acquired second language (L2) readers of Chinese in lexical decision (LD) and delayed naming (DN) tasks. Most Chinese characters are phonograms, which have a phonetic radical that carries phonological ...postprin