Is handwriting constrained by phonology? Evidence from Stroop tasks with written responses and Chinese characters

Direct Retrieval of Orthographic Representations in Chinese Handwritten Production: Evidence from a Dynamic Causal Modeling Study

This present study identified an optimal model representing the relationship between orthography and phonology in Chinese handwritten production using dynamic causal modeling, and further explored how this model was modulated by word frequency and syllable frequency. Each model contained five volumes of interest in the left hemisphere (angular gyrus [AG], inferior frontal gyrus [IFG], middle frontal gyrus [MFG], superior frontal gyrus [SFG], and supramarginal gyrus [SMG]), with the IFG as the driven input area. Results showed the superiority of a model in which both the MFG and the AG connected with the IFG, supporting the orthography autonomy hypothesis. Word frequency modulated the AG → SFG connection (information flow from the orthographic lexicon to the orthographic buffer), and syllable frequency affected the IFG → MFG connection (information transmission from the semantic system to the phonological lexicon). This study thus provides new insights into the connectivity architecture of neural substrates involved in writing.

On the tip of the pen: Effects of character-level lexical variables and handwriter-level individual differences on orthographic retrieval difficulties in Chinese handwriting

In the past few decades, Chinese speakers have suffered from difficulties in handwriting, which include tip-of-the-pen (TOP) states (knowing a character but failing to fully handwrite it) and character amnesia in general (a general inability to handwrite a character despite being able to recognise it). The current study presents a systematic empirical investigation of the effects of character-level lexical characteristics and handwriter-level individual differences on TOP, character amnesia, and partial orthographic access in TOP states. Using a spelling-to-dictation task, we had 64 participants to handwrite 200 simplified Chinese characters. We showed that, at the lexical level, participants experienced more TOP and character amnesia in handwriting if a character was less frequent, was acquired later in life, was embedded in a less familiar word, or had more strokes; TOP but not character amnesia was additionally affected by phonetic radical order and spelling regularity. At the handwriter level, people also experienced more TOP and character amnesia if they had more digital exposure, less pen exposure, or less print exposure. In a TOP state, partial orthographic access was more likely if a character was acquired later in life, had fewer strokes, or had a left-right or top-down composition or, if a handwriter had less digital exposure.

Orthographic and Phonological Processing in Chinese Character Copying - A Preliminary Report

In the current study, the effects of orthographic and phonological processing in Chinese character copying were investigated using a data set extracted from a database containing handwriting data of 856 stimuli; the responses of which were collected from 100 participants. To investigate the effect of character frequency, radical frequency, and phonetic regularity, 151 phonetic compounds were selected from the database because (1) their corresponding phonetic radicals were all free-standing characters, (2) their corresponding phonetic radicals were located at either the right or the bottom positions in the characters, and (3) no more than 10% of the participants made errors when copying these target characters. The results of the linear mixed effect models revealed that after controlling for inter-stroke distance (ISD) and stroke number, the inter-stroke intervals (ISIs) at the radical and logographeme boundaries were significantly longer, indicating significant orthographic processing in the immediate copying task that radicals and logographemes were used as writing units. In addition, shorter ISIs at the logographeme boundary associated with higher radical frequency, and shorter ISIs at the radical boundary associated with higher character frequency and regular characters, were observed. These observations indicated significant orthographic and phonological effects in the immediate copying task. Finally, the significant phonetic regularity effect observed also supported the notion that phonology contributes to Chinese character writing and that the effects of central processing, including character frequency and phonetic regularity, cascade over peripheral processing during Chinese character copying.

Phonological inhibition in written production

The present study investigated the contribution of phonological relatedness on written production using the blocked cyclic naming paradigm. Participants were instructed to write down picture names in homogeneous and heterogeneous context. In the homogeneous context, items shared a syllable which corresponded to different written forms in various items. The position type of the shared syllable was manipulated so that the shared syllable was initial-only or distributed across various positions of words. Contrary to previous studies which showed facilitative effects of phonological relatedness on written production, interference effects in both reaction times and errors were found for both position types of phonological overlap. The findings indicate that phonological overlap does not always lead to facilitation but inhibition could occur. Implications of the present findings for theoretical models of word production are discussed.

Neural Correlates of Orthographic Access in Mandarin Chinese Writing: An fMRI Study of the Word-Frequency Effect

Writing is an essential tool for human communication and involves multiple linguistic, cognitive, and motor processes. Chinese, a logographic writing system, differs remarkably from the writing systems of alphabetic languages. The neural substrates of Chinese writing are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a copying task, this study probed the neural underpinnings of orthographic access during Mandarin Chinese writing by employing the word-frequency effect. The results showed that writing low-frequency characters evoked greater activation in the bilateral superior/middle/inferior frontal gyrus, superior/inferior parietal lobule, and fusiform gyrus than writing high-frequency characters. Moreover, psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis demonstrated that the word-frequency effect modulated functional connectivity within the frontal-occipital networks and the parietal-occipital networks. Together, these findings illustrate the neural correlates of orthographic access for Mandarin Chinese writing, shedding new light on the cognitive architecture of writing across various writing systems.

Catechol-O-Methyltransferase moderates effect of stress mindset on affect and cognition

There is evidence that altering stress mindset-the belief that stress is enhancing vs. debilitating-can change cognitive, affective and physiological responses to stress. However individual differences in responsiveness to stress mindset manipulations have not been explored. Given the previously established role of catecholamines in both placebo effects and stress, we hypothesized that genetic variation in catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), an enzyme that metabolizes catecholamines, would moderate responses to an intervention intended to alter participants' mindsets about stress. Participants (N = 107) were exposed to a stress mindset manipulation (videos highlighting either the enhancing or debilitating effects of stress) prior to engaging in a Trier Social Stress task and subsequent cognitive tasks. The associations of the COMT rs4680 polymorphism with the effect of stress mindset video manipulations on cognitive and affective responses were examined. Genetic variation at rs4680 modified the effects of stress mindset on affective and cognitive responses to stress. Individuals homozygous for rs4680 low-activity allele (met/met) were responsive to the stress-is-enhancing mindset manipulation as indicated by greater increases in positive affect, improved cognitive functioning, and happiness bias in response to stress. Conversely, individuals homozygous for the high-activity allele (val/val) were not as responsive to the stress mindset manipulation. These results suggest that responses to stress mindset intervention may vary with COMT genotype. These findings contribute to the understanding of gene by environment interactions for mindset interventions and stress reactivity and therefore warrant further investigations.

Activation of semantic information at the sublexical level during handwriting production: Evidence from inhibition effects of Chinese semantic radicals in the picture-word interference paradigm

Using a non-alphabetic language (e.g., Chinese), the present study tested a novel view that semantic information at the sublexical level should be activated during handwriting production. Over 80% of Chinese characters are phonograms, in which semantic radicals represent category information (e.g., 'chair,' 'peach,' 'orange' are related to plants) while phonetic radicals represent phonetic information (e.g., 'wolf,' 'brightness,' 'male,' are all pronounced /lang/). Under different semantic category conditions at the lexical level (semantically related in Experiment 1; semantically unrelated in Experiment 2), the orthographic relatedness and semantic relatedness of semantic radicals in the picture name and its distractor were manipulated under different SOAs (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, the interval between the onset of the picture and the onset of the interference word). Two questions were addressed: (1) Is it possible that semantic information could be activated in the sublexical level conditions? (2) How are semantic and orthographic information dynamically accessed in word production? Results showed that both orthographic and semantic information were activated under the present picture-word interference paradigm, dynamically under different SOAs, which supported our view that discussions on semantic processes in the writing modality should be extended to the sublexical level. The current findings provide possibility for building new orthography-phonology-semantics models in writing.

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.

Transforming Water: Social Influence Moderates Psychological, Physiological, and Functional Response to a Placebo Product

This paper investigates how social influence can alter physiological, psychological, and functional responses to a placebo product and how such responses influence the ultimate endorsement of the product. Participants consumed a product, “AquaCharge Energy Water,” falsely-labeled as containing 200 mg of caffeine but which was actually plain spring water, in one of three conditions: a no social influence condition, a disconfirming social influence condition, and a confirming social influence condition. Results demonstrated that the effect of the product labeling on physiological alertness (systolic blood pressure), psychological alertness (self-reported alertness), functional alertness (cognitive interference), and product endorsement was moderated by social influence: participants experienced more subjective, physiological and functional alertness and stronger product endorsement when they consumed the product in the confirming social influence condition than when they consumed the product in the disconfirming social influence condition. These results suggest that social influence can alter subjective, physiological, and functional responses to a faux product, in this case transforming the effects of plain water.

The Temporal Courses of Phonological and Orthographic Encoding in Handwritten Production in Chinese: An ERP Study

A central issue in written production concerns how phonological codes influence the output of orthographic codes. We used a picture-word interference paradigm combined with the event-related potential technique to investigate the temporal courses of phonological and orthographic activation and their interplay in Chinese writing. Distractors were orthographically related, phonologically related, orthographically plus phonologically related, or unrelated to picture names. The behavioral results replicated the classic facilitation effect for all three types of relatedness. The ERP results indicated an orthographic effect in the time window of 370–500 ms (onset latency: 370 ms), a phonological effect in the time window of 460–500 ms (onset latency: 464 ms), and an additive pattern of both effects in both time windows, thus indicating that orthographic codes were accessed earlier than, and independent of, phonological codes in written production. The orthographic activation originates from the semantic system, whereas the phonological effect results from the activation spreading from the orthographic lexicon to the phonological lexicon. These findings substantially strengthen the existing evidence that shows that access to orthographic codes is not mediated by phonological information, and they provide important support for the orthographic autonomy hypothesis.

Written object naming, spelling to dictation, and immediate copying: Different tasks, different pathways?

We report an investigation of cross-task comparisons of handwritten latencies in written object naming, spelling to dictation, and immediate copying. In three separate sessions, adults had to write down a list of concrete nouns from their corresponding pictures (written naming), from their spoken (spelling to dictation) and from their visual presentation (immediate copying). Linear mixed models without random slopes were performed on the latencies in order to study and compare within-task fixed effects. By-participants random slopes were then included to investigate individual differences within and across tasks. Overall, the findings suggest that written naming, spelling to dictation, and copying all involve a lexical pathway, but that written naming relies on this pathway more than the other two tasks do. Only spelling to dictation strongly involves a nonlexical pathway. Finally, the analyses performed at the level of participants indicate that, depending on the type of task, the slower participants are more or less influenced by certain psycholinguistic variables.

Phonology is not accessed earlier than orthography in Chinese written production: evidence for the orthography autonomy hypothesis

The contribution of orthographic and phonological codes to written production remains controversial. We report results using a picture–word interference task in which participants were asked to write (Experiments 1 and 2) or to speak (Experiment 3) the names of pictures while trying to ignore visual distractors, and the interval between the target and distractor onset was varied. Distractors were orthographically plus phonologically related, orthographically related, phonologically related, or unrelated to picture names. For written production, we found an exclusive orthographic effect at an early stage, reflecting a fast and direct link between meaning and graphemic lexicon, and we demonstrated that orthographic codes can be accessed directly from meaning in healthy adults. We also found orthographic and phonological effects at a later stage, reflecting a slow and indirect link between meaning and graphemic lexicon via phonology. Furthermore, the absence of an interaction effect of orthographic and phonological facilitation on written latencies suggests that the two effects are additive in general and that they might occur independently in written production in Chinese. For spoken production, we found that orthographic and phonological effects occur simultaneously in spoken production and that the two effects are additive at an early stage but interactive at a later stage. The temporal courses and their interplay of orthographic and phonological effects are dissociative in written and spoken production. Our findings thus support the orthography autonomy hypothesis, rather than the obligatory phonological mediation hypothesis, in written production in Chinese (as a non-alphabetic script).

Phonological codes constrain output of orthographic codes via sublexical and lexical routes in Chinese written production

To what extent do phonological codes constrain orthographic output in handwritten production? We investigated how phonological codes constrain the selection of orthographic codes via sublexical and lexical routes in Chinese written production. Participants wrote down picture names in a picture-naming task in Experiment 1or response words in a symbol—word associative writing task in Experiment 2. A sublexical phonological property of picture names (phonetic regularity: regular vs. irregular) in Experiment 1and a lexical phonological property of response words (homophone density: dense vs. sparse) in Experiment 2, as well as word frequency of the targets in both experiments, were manipulated. A facilitatory effect of word frequency was found in both experiments, in which words with high frequency were produced faster than those with low frequency. More importantly, we observed an inhibitory phonetic regularity effect, in which low-frequency picture names with regular first characters were slower to write than those with irregular ones, and an inhibitory homophone density effect, in which characters with dense homophone density were produced more slowly than those with sparse homophone density. Results suggested that phonological codes constrained handwritten production via lexical and sublexical routes.