Semantic radicals contribute to the visual identification of Chinese characters

Abstract In a character decision task, phonetic compound targets (composed of a semantic radical and a phonetic component) followed primes that shared (a) the target's radical and were semantically related (R+S+), (b) the target's radical and were not semantically related (R+S−), (c) no radical but were semantically related (R−S+), and (d) no radical and were not semantically related (R−S−). Target radicals also varied as to the number of compounds in which they appeared (i.e., combinability). When targets followed primes immediately (Experiment 1; SOA 243 ms), target latencies following R+S− primes were slowed relative to R−S− controls but those following R+S+ and R−S+ primes were facilitated equivalently. Increases in combinability significantly reduced decision latencies. When 10 items separated primes and targets (Experiment 2), facilitation was evident only after R+S+ primes. Results indicate that one type of component, the semantic radical, is processed in the course of Chinese character recognition and that orthographic similarity due to repetition of a radical is not an adequate account.

[1]  G. A. Murrell,et al.  WORD RECOGNITION AND MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE , 1974 .

[2]  Charles E. Osgood,et al.  Salience of the word as a unit in the perception of language , 1974 .

[3]  K. Forster,et al.  Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words , 1975 .

[4]  J. H. Neely.  Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. , 1977 .

[5]  Ovid J. L. Tzeng,et al.  Speech Recoding in Reading Chinese Characters. , 1977 .

[6]  M. Taft.  Prefix Stripping Revisited. , 1981 .

[7]  Chao-Ming Cheng,et al.  Perception of Chinese characters. , 1981 .

[8]  John Defrancis.  The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy , 1986 .

[9]  C. Fowler,et al.  Relations among regular and irregular morphologically related words in the lexicon as revealed by repetition priming , 1985, Memory & cognition.

[10]  Alessandro Laudanna,et al.  Reading mechanisms and the organization of the lexicon: evidence from phonological dyslexia. , 1985 .

[11]  V. L. Hanson,et al.  Morphophonology and Lexical Organization in Deaf Readers , 1985, Language and speech.

[12]  A. Caramazza,et al.  Reading mechanisms and the organisation of the lexicon: Evidence from acquired dyslexia , 1985 .

[13]  A. Ellis.  Progress in the psychology of language , 1985 .

[14]  Henry S. R. Kao,et al.  Linguistics, psychology, and the Chinese language , 1986 .

[15]  C. Fowler,et al.  The inflected noun system in Serbo-Croatian: Lexical representation of morphological structure , 1987, Memory & cognition.

[16]  C A Fowler,et al.  Formal relationships among words and the organization of the mental lexicon , 1987, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[17]  J. Moskovljević,et al.  Repetition priming is not purely episodic in origin. , 1987, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[18]  C. Leong,et al.  Automatic Processing of Morphemic Orthography By Mature Readers , 1987, Language and speech.

[19]  A. Caramazza,et al.  Lexical access and inflectional morphology , 1988, Cognition.

[20]  S. Andrews.  Frequency and neighborhood effects on lexical access: Activation or search? , 1989 .

[21]  Charles N. Li,et al.  Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar , 1989 .

[22]  John Defrancis.  Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems , 1991 .

[23]  J. Grainger,et al.  Priming word recognition with orthographic neighbors: effects of relative prime-target frequency. , 1990 .

[24]  S. Bentin,et al.  The Contribution of Morphological and Semantic Relatedness to Repetition Priming at Short and Long Lags: Evidence from Hebrew , 1990, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[25]  Rumjahn Hoosain,et al.  Psycholinguistic Implications for Linguistic Relativity: A Case Study of Chinese , 1991 .

[26]  C. Perfetti,et al.  Phonological processes in reading Chinese characters. , 1991 .

[27]  J. Grainger,et al.  Masked morphological priming in visual word recognition. , 1991 .

[28]  L. Katz,et al.  Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning: An Overview , 1992 .

[29]  Alessandro Laudanna,et al.  Processing in?ectional and derivational morphology , 1992 .

[30]  The organization of the lexicon in Japanese: Single and compound kanji , 1992 .

[31]  Alessandro Laudanna,et al.  Chapter 18 Units of Representation for Derived Words in the Lexicon , 1992 .

[32]  C. Perfetti,et al.  Reading in English and Chinese: Evidence for a "universal" phonological principle. , 1992 .

[33]  Laurie Beth Feldman,et al.  Chapter 17 Morphological Analysis in Word Recognition , 1992 .

[34]  Ram Frost,et al.  Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning , 1992 .

[35]  S. Bentin,et al.  Morphological Analysis of Disrupted Morphemes: Evidence from Hebrew , 1994, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[36]  R. Baayen,et al.  Prefix stripping re-revisited , 1994 .

[37]  L. Feldman.  Beyond Orthography and Phonology: Differences between Inflections and Derivations , 1994 .

[38]  Brian Butterworth,et al.  The inconsistency of consistency effects in reading: the case of Japanese kanji phonology , 1994, ICSLP.

[39]  Lucia Colombo,et al.  Inhibitory Effects in Form Priming: Evaluating a Phonological Competition Explanation , 1994 .

[40]  J Grainger,et al.  Effects of Orthography are Independent of Phonology in Masked form Priming , 1994, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[41]  Charles A. Perfetti,et al.  The Universal Word Identification Reflex , 1995 .

[42]  Nancy Ewald Jackson,et al.  Graphic and Phonological Processing in Chinese Character Identification , 1995 .

[43]  Li Hai Tan,et al.  Role of early presemantic phonological code in Chinese character identification. , 1995 .

[44]  P. Zwitserlood,et al.  Morphological and orthographic similarity in visual word recognition. , 1995 .

[45]  M J Chen,et al.  Visual and phonological pathways to the lexicon: Evidence from Chinese readers , 1995, Memory & cognition.

[46]  Li Hai Tan,et al.  Activation of phonological codes before access to character meaning in written Chinese , 1996 .

[47]  M. Taft,et al.  Submorphemic processing in reading Chinese. , 1997 .

[48]  K. Forster,et al.  What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation. , 1997, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[49]  J. Rueckl,et al.  Morphological priming, fragment completion, and connectionist networks , 1997 .

[50]  L. Feldman,et al.  The role of component function in visual recognition of Chinese characters. , 1997, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[51]  Jian Wang,et al.  Reading Chinese Script : A Cognitive Analysis , 1999 .

[52]  A. Inhoff,et al.  Semantic Radicals in Phonetic Compounds: Implications for Visual Character Recognition in Chinese , 1999 .

[53]  Laurie Beth Feldman,et al.  Are morphological effects distinguishable from the effects of shared meaning and shared form , 2000 .