The second-order effect of orthography-to-phonology mapping consistency on Chinese spoken word recognition

Abstract The influences of the orthography-to-phonology (O-to-P) mapping consistency as the first-order effect on visual word recognition are well documented. Few studies have investigated the second-order O-to-P consistency effect on spoken word recognition. To address this issue, Experiment 1 asked participants to perform a writing-to-dictation task for 230 Chinese monosyllabic words and found that the response accuracy increased with the homophone density, and the homophone density, O-to-P consistency, and character frequency also affected the generation probability and reaction time of written responses. Experiment 2 involved manipulating the homophone density of the spoken words and the O-to-P consistency of the written characters in writing to dictation with event-related potential measurement. The data revealed an interactive effect between the O-to-P consistency and homophone density on frontal-central N400 and a homophone density effect on the posterior late positivity component. The results support the reverberation effect of the O-to-P consistency on Chinese spoken word recognition.