Phonetic radicals, not phonological coding systems, support orthographic learning via self-teaching in Chinese

A large-scale database of Chinese characters and words collected from elementary school textbooks

Lexical databases are essential tools for studies on language processing and acquisition. Most previous Chinese lexical databases have focused on materials for adults, yet little is known about reading materials for children and how lexical properties from these materials affect children's reading comprehension. In the present study, we provided the first large database of 2999 Chinese characters and 2182 words collected from the official textbooks recently issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the People's Republic of China for most elementary schools in Mainland China, as well as norms from both school-aged children and adults. The database incorporates key orthographic, phonological, and semantic factors from these lexical units. A word-naming task was used to investigate the effects of these factors in character and word processing in both adults and children. The results suggest that: (1) as the grade level increases, visual complexity of those characters and words increases whereas semantic richness and frequency decreases; (2) the effects of lexical predictors on processing both characters and words vary across children and adults; (3) the effect of age of acquisition shows different patterns on character and word-naming performance. The database is available on Open Science Framework (OSF) ( https://osf.io/ynk8c/?view_only=5186bd68549340bd923e9b6531d2c820 ) for future studies on Chinese language development.

A Comparative Study of Three Measurement Methods of Chinese Character Recognition for L2 Chinese Learners

Measuring Chinese character recognition ability is essential in research on character learning among learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). Three methods are typically used to evaluate character recognition competence by investigating the following properties of a given character: (a) pronunciation (phonological method), (b) meaning (semantic method), and (c) pronunciation and meaning (phonological and semantic or PS method). However, no study has explored the similar or dissimilar outcomes that these three measurements might yield. The current study examined this issue by testing 162 CSL learners with various L1 backgrounds and Chinese proficiency levels. Participants' performance in character recognition measured using a phonological method, a semantic method, and a PS method was compared, which led to two major findings. In terms of similarity, participants' performance in character recognition and the influence of L1 background and Chinese proficiency level on character recognition was similar across the three methods. As for differences, the semantic method could yield a character recognition test with better quality than the other two methods, and the three methods yielded different best fitting models and showed different predictions for Chinese proficiency across different L1 groups. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are proposed.

Orthographic learning via self-teaching in Chinese: The roles of phonological recoding, context, and phonetic and semantic radicals

According to the self-teaching hypothesis, children can self-teach new written words via phonological recoding-translating written words into their verbal pronunciations. Moreover, learning words in meaningful story contexts supports learning when phonological recoding is reduced (e.g., when encountering irregular words). The current study tested the self-teaching hypothesis in Chinese-a non-alphabetic writing system. Native Mandarin-speaking second graders read either 16 stories (story context; n = 33) or word lists (without context; n = 34) under the conditions of allowed phonological recoding (reading aloud) or reduced phonological recoding (viewing while repeatedly naming a meaningless letter sequence b p m f). Each story and word list included one target pseudo-character consisting of a phonetic radical and a semantic radical providing pronunciation and meaning cues, respectively, for the pseudo-character. The regularity of phonetic radicals of pseudo-characters (regular vs. irregular: providing full vs. no pronunciation cue) and the transparency of semantic radicals of pseudo-characters (transparent vs. opaque: providing complete vs. no meaning cue) were manipulated. The orthographic learning outcomes were measured using the character writing, orthographic choice, naming, and a semantic production task. Our results support a primary role of phonological recoding in orthographic learning. Moreover, regular phonetic radicals facilitate phonology-orthography association, whereas transparent semantic radicals support semantic-orthography mapping. In sum, we extended the self-teaching hypothesis to a non-alphabetic writing system and revealed the unique roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in orthographic learning.