Do position-general radicals have a role to play in processing Chinese characters?

Comparing word recognition in simplified and traditional Chinese: A megastudy approach

Although it is well established that the visual complexity of a written word can influence processing, it is far less clear from a cross-script perspective, whether the overall visual complexity of the entire written lexicon also affects word recognition. This question can be answered with the data in megastudy of lexical decision in Chinese (MELD-CH), which was developed with over 800 participants responding to 12,587 simplified and traditional Chinese words. The results showed that lexical decision was slower but more accurate in simplified Chinese, which has about 22.5% less strokes, than traditional Chinese. This pattern could not be explained by a speed-accuracy trade-off. Moderate correlations were found in response times and error rates between the two scripts, indicating considerable overlap in processing despite the script difference. In addition, (generalised) linear mixed-effects modelling was used to examine whether the simplified and traditional Chinese groups differed in sensitivity towards linguistic variables. The results showed that the effects of word frequency, word length, and number of strokes were stronger in recognising simplified Chinese words, whereas the effects of number of words formed and number of meanings of the constituent characters were stronger in traditional Chinese. These results suggested that the visual-perceptual processing demands of simplified Chinese might force readers to focus more on local properties of the words, making them less sensitive to global properties that are defined over the entire lexicon. Finally, limitations and alternative explanations of the results were discussed.

Development and validation of a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system

This study developed and validated a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system (CPN system) that can assist researchers in creating experimental materials using Chinese characters. Based on a large-scale dataset of 6097 characters, the CPN system provides researchers with precise Chinese orthographic information (structures and positions, radical frequency, number of strokes, number of radical-sharing neighbors, and position-based regularity) to create three types of experimental stimuli: pseudo-characters, semi non-characters, and whole non-characters. Featuring the position-based regularity of 446 radicals, the CPN system helps researchers to manipulate, or to control for, orthographic characteristics of radicals to study Chinese lexical processing. In two empirical validations for stimuli created by the system, Chinese-as-second-language learners (n = 79) and first-language users (n = 41), respectively, participated in a Chinese orthographic choice task in which participants compared two artificial characters and chose the one that more closely resembled a real Chinese character. Both validations demonstrate that highly proficient Chinese readers are better able to identify pseudo-characters, suggesting that the radical's position-based information impacts Chinese character identification to different extents. With the empirical support for the created stimuli, the system further affords researchers auto-generated outcomes with downloadable images and Excel sheets for creating customized stimuli, making material selection easy, efficient, and effective. This CPN system is the first large-scale, data-driven tool free for researchers who are interested in studies of written Chinese. CPN should benefit the field of Chinese orthographic processing, Chinese instruction, and cross-linguistic comparisons, providing a useful tool for studying Chinese lexical processing.

Can mirror reading reverse the flow of time? Evidence from Japanese speakers

Accumulating evidence over the last two decades has established the causal role of a unidirectional orthography in shaping speakers' mental representations of time. Casasanto and Bottini (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473-479, 2014) extended previous findings by showing that exposure to mirror-reversed orthography of speakers' native language could completely redirect their mental timelines within minutes. However, the question of whether such a causal effect of writing direction on temporal cognition can be identified in speakers whose native languages adopt bidirectional orthographies remains underexplored in the literature. To address this issue, the present study focused on Japanese which uses bidirectional writing systems, one proceeding horizontally from left to right (HLR) and one vertically from top to bottom (VTB). Two experiments were performed, and the tasks asked participants to process standard/mirror orthography prime questions about time arranged horizontally or vertically, followed by horizontal or vertical arrays of pictorial target stimuli about temporal relations. Results demonstrated that Japanese speakers encoded passage of time into a top-to-bottom linear path commensurate with the VTB writing direction, but they did not align their mental representations of time with the HLR writing orientation. Accordingly, exposure to mirror-reversed bidirectional orthographies redirected Japanese speakers' vertical but not horizontal space-time mappings. Theoretical implications concerning the causal effects of bidirectional orthographies and the generalizability of the representational flexibility of time maintained by Casasanto and Bottini (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473-479) are discussed.

Rapid implicit extraction of abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters during reading

Orthographic processing is crucial in reading. For the Chinese language, sub-lexical processing has already taken place at radical level. Previous literature reported early position-specific radical representations and later position-general radical representations, implying a possible separating process of abstract position information irrespective of radicals per se from radical representations during orthographic processing. However, it remains largely unclear whether the abstract pattern of spatial arrangement of radicals can be rapidly extracted, and if so, whether this extraction takes place at the visual cortex, the very first processing center. As the visual cortex is documented to actively participate in orthographic processing, it may also play a role in the possible extraction of abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters. Hence, we hypothesize that abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters are covertly extracted at the visual cortex during reading. In this study, we investigated whether the visual cortex could rapidly extract abstract structural patterns of Chinese characters, using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. We adopted an active oddball paradigm with two types of deviant stimuli different only in one feature, structural or tonal, from standard stimuli; in each of the two sessions, subjects focused conscious attention on one feature and neglected the other. We observed that the ERPs recorded at occipital electrodes responded differentially to standard and structural deviant stimuli in both sessions, especially within the time range of the occipital P200 component. Then, we extracted three source waves arising from different levels of the visual cortex. Early response differences (from 88 to 456 ms after stimulus onset) were observed between the source waves, probably arising from left primary/secondary and bilateral associative visual cortices, in response to standard and deviant stimuli that violated abstract structural patterns, whether subjects focused their attention on the character structure or not. This suggests rapid extraction of abstract structural patterns of Chinese characters in the visual cortex, no matter the abstract structural pattern was explicit or implicit to subjects. Note that the source waves arising from right primary/secondary visual cortices in response to standard and structural deviant stimuli did not differ at all, indicating that this extraction of the abstract structural pattern of Chinese characters was left-lateralized. Besides, no difference was observed between source waves originating from any level of the visual cortex to standard and deviant stimuli that violated abstract tonal patterns, until 768 ms when a late effect related to conscious detection of targets occurred at higher levels of the visual cortex. Note that at late stages (later than 698 ms after stimulus onset), responses arising from bilateral associative visual cortices to standard and target stimuli differed for both sessions, no matter the structural or tonal feature was attended to. Our findings support the primitive intelligence of visual cortex to rapidly extract abstract orthographic patterns of Chinese characters that might be engaged in further lexical processing. Our findings also suggest that this rapid extraction can take place implicitly during reading.

Reading Pinyin activates sublexcial character orthography for skilled Chinese readers

How do skilled Chinese readers, accustomed to characters, process Pinyin, a phonemic transcription of Chinese? Does the orthography of Chinese characters become activated? In four experiments, native speakers first made a meaning judgment on a two-syllable word written in Pinyin. Immediately following, they responded to a character whose orthography sometimes was related to the character corresponding to the Pinyin. In Experiments 1 and 3, participant named the color of the presented characters; there was an interference effect when the presented characters included phonetic radicals that were part of the character corresponding to the Pinyin. In Experiments 2 and 4, participants named the character; naming times were affected if either the semantic or phonetic radical was shared with the character corresponding to the Pinyin. The results indicate that access to lexical representations in Chinese is centered on the orthographic character, even when the input is Pinyin.

The Interaction between Central and Peripheral Processing in Chinese Handwritten Production: Evidence from the Effect of Lexicality and Radical Complexity

The interaction between central and peripheral processing in written word production remains controversial. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of radical complexity and lexicality in central processing cascade into peripheral processing in Chinese written word production. The participants were asked to write characters and non-characters (lexicality) with different radical complexity (few- and many-strokes). The findings indicated that regardless of the lexicality, the writing latencies were longer for characters with higher complexity (the many-strokes condition) than for characters with lower complexity (the few-strokes condition). The participants slowed down their writing execution at the radicals' boundary strokes, which indicated a radical boundary effect in peripheral processing. Interestingly, the lexicality and the radical complexity affected the pattern of shift velocity and writing velocity during the execution of writing. Lexical processing cascades into peripheral processing but only at the beginning of Chinese characters. In contrast, the radical complexity influenced the execution of handwriting movement throughout the entire character, and the pattern of the effect interacted with the character frequency. These results suggest that the processes of the lexicality and the radical complexity function during the execution of handwritten word production, which suggests that central processing cascades over peripheral processing during Chinese characters handwriting.

When "He" Can Also Be "She": An ERP Study of Reflexive Pronoun Resolution in Written Mandarin Chinese

The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (, with semantic radical , meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (, with semantic radical , meaning woman) indicates females only. This critical feature could result in different patterns of processing of gender information in text, but this is an issue that has seldom been addressed in psycholinguistics. In Chinese, the written forms of the reflexive pronouns are composed of a pronoun plus the reflexive "/self" (/himself and /herself). The present study focuses on how such gender specificity interacts with the gender type of an antecedent, whether definitional (proper name) or stereotypical (stereotypical role noun) during reflexive pronoun resolution. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, gender congruity between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent was studied by manipulating the gender type of antecedents and the gender specificity of reflexive pronouns (default: /himself vs. specific: /herself). Results included a P200 "attention related" congruity effect for /himself and a P600 "integration difficulty" congruity effect for /herself. Reflexive pronoun specificity independently affected the P200 and N400 components. These results highlight the role of /himself as a default applicable to both genders and indicate that only the processing of /herself supports a two-stage model for anaphor resolution. While both reflexive pronouns are evaluated at the bonding stage, the processing of the gender-specific reflexive pronoun is completed in the resolution stage.

Neuromagnetic brain activities associated with perceptual categorization and sound-content incongruency: a comparison between monosyllabic words and pitch names

In human cultures, the perceptual categorization of musical pitches relies on pitch-naming systems. A sung pitch name concurrently holds the information of fundamental frequency and pitch name. These two aspects may be either congruent or incongruent with regard to pitch categorization. The present study aimed to compare the neuromagnetic responses to musical and verbal stimuli for congruency judgments, for example a congruent pair for the pitch C4 sung with the pitch name do in a C-major context (the pitch-semantic task) or for the meaning of a word to match the speaker’s identity (the voice-semantic task). Both the behavioral data and neuromagnetic data showed that congruency detection of the speaker’s identity and word meaning was slower than that of the pitch and pitch name. Congruency effects of musical stimuli revealed that pitch categorization and semantic processing of pitch information were associated with P2m and N400m, respectively. For verbal stimuli, P2m and N400m did not show any congruency effect. In both the pitch-semantic task and the voice-semantic task, we found that incongruent stimuli evoked stronger slow waves with the latency of 500–600 ms than congruent stimuli. These findings shed new light on the neural mechanisms underlying pitch-naming processes.

RadicalLocator: A software tool for identifying the radicals in Chinese characters

This article describes a new software tool called RadicalLocator that can be used to automatically identify (e.g., for visual inspection) individual target radicals (i.e., groups of strokes) in written Chinese characters. We first briefly clarify why this software is useful for research purposes and discuss the factors that make this pattern recognition task so difficult. We then describe how the software can be downloaded and installed, and used to identify the radicals in characters for the purposes of, for example, selecting materials for psycholinguistic experiments. Finally, we discuss several known limitations of the software and heuristics for addressing them.

Seeing visual word forms: spatial summation, eccentricity and spatial configuration

We investigated observers' performance in detecting and discriminating visual word forms as a function of target size and retinal eccentricity. The contrast threshold of visual words was measured with a spatial two-alternative forced-choice paradigm and a PSI adaptive method. The observers were to indicate which of two sides contained a stimulus in the detection task, and which contained a real character (as opposed to a pseudo- or non-character) in the discrimination task. When the target size was sufficiently small, the detection threshold of a character decreased as its size increased, with a slope of -1/2 on log-log coordinates, up to a critical size at all eccentricities and for all stimulus types. The discrimination threshold decreased with target size with a slope of -1 up to a critical size that was dependent on stimulus type and eccentricity. Beyond that size, the threshold decreased with a slope of -1/2 on log-log coordinates before leveling out. The data was well fit by a spatial summation model that contains local receptive fields (RFs) and a summation across these filters within an attention window. Our result implies that detection is mediated by local RFs smaller than any tested stimuli and thus detection performance is dominated by summation across receptive fields. On the other hand, discrimination is dominated by a summation within a local RF in the fovea but a cross RF summation in the periphery.

Left-lateralized N170 response to unpronounceable pseudo but not false Chinese characters-the key role of orthography

A negative event-related potential (ERP) component, known as N170, can be readily recorded over the posterior left brain region when skilled readers are presented with visual words. This left-lateralized word-related N170 has been attributed either to linguistic processes, particularly phonological processing, or to the role of orthographic regularity, emphasizing a perceptual origin. This debate, however, is difficult to resolve in the context of alphabetic scripts because of the tight relations between orthography and phonology. In contrast, Chinese characters have arbitrary mappings between orthographic and sound forms, making it possible to tease apart these two properties of visual words. We therefore addressed this issue by examining ERP responses to Chinese characters and three types of structurally matched but unpronounceable stimuli: pseudo-characters, false-characters, and stroke combinations. A content-irrelevant color matching task was adopted to minimize potentially different top-down modulations across stimulus types. Results show that, relative to false-characters and stroke combinations, real- and pseudo-characters evoked greater N170 in the left posterior brain region. Critically, despite being unpronounceable, pseudo-characters produced the same amplitude and left-lateralized N170, just as real-characters. These results provide strong evidence that orthography rather than phonology serves as the main driver for the enhanced and left-lateralized N170 to visual words.

The time course of semantic and orthographic encoding in Chinese word production: an event-related potential study

Previous studies have shown that access to conceptual/semantic information precedes phonological access in alphabetic language production such as English or Dutch. The present study investigated the time course of semantic and orthographic encoding in Chinese (a non-alphabetic language) spoken word production. Participants were shown pictures and carried out a dual-choice go/nogo task based on semantic information and orthographic information. The results of the N200 (related to response inhibition) and LRP (related to response preparation) indicated that semantic access preceded orthographic encoding by 176-202 ms. The different patterns of the two N200 effects suggest that they may tap into different processes. The N200 and LRP analyses also indicate that accessing the orthographic representation in speaking is likely optional and depends on specific task requirement.