Exploring Semantic Activation of Phonetic Radical in Chinese Character Recognition

Hsuan-Yi, Lee & Jei-Tun, Wu

Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

Introduction■ Based on the finding from primed character naming experiments, Zhou and Marslen-Wilson (1999) argued that the character as a whole and its embedding radicals are simultaneously processed during recognizing a character.

■ In previous studies (Zhou and Marslen-Wilson, 1999), the semantic priming effect of phonetic radical may be induced by radical prime condition. The question must be resolved.

■ By the way, if the phenomenon was true, the same effect should be observed in the LDT task .

(Correspondence: jtwu@ntu.edu.tw)

AcknowledgementThis study is partly supported by National Science Council, Taiwan.(NSC93-2413-H-002-001 )

Table1. Character decision latencies (response times [RTs]; in miliseconds) and Error Rates (in percentages) in EXP 1.

Naming LDT

Prime type Prime type

SOATarget word

frequencyRadical

Compound

Control Radical Compound Control

50ms High

RT 446 455 458 449 462 463

Error Rate

(2.82) (3.21) (3.76) (1.38) (2.11) (3.26)

Low

RT 543 571 584 556 586 596

Error Rate

(6.91) (6.45) (7.72) (4.31) (5.14) (6.58)

200ms High

RT 434 441 449 440 453 464

Error Rate

(0.00) (0.93) (1.20) (0.49) (0.76) (0.49)

Low

RT 525 549 574 536 549 589

Error Rate

(6.25) (7.15) (6.54) (6.12) (7.83) (6.56)

Table2. Character decision latencies (response times [RTs]; in miliseconds) and Error Rates (in percentages) in EXP 2.

Naming LDT

Prime type Prime type

SOATarget word

frequencyCompound Control Compound Control

50ms High

RT 457 449 459 468

Error Rate

(1.65) (1.69) (0.98) (0.48)

Low

RT 584 590 568 588

Error Rate

(5.36) (6.01) (8.52) (8.52)

200ms High

RT 431 436 434 435

Error Rate

(1.22) (2.35) (0.78) (0.63)

Low

RT 549 557 555 574

Error Rate

(6.98) (6.33) (8.18) (8.91)

Blue word: tendency ; yellow word: p < .05 ; red word: p < .01 .

Exp 2

Participants

In the Exp, 105 National Taiwan University students who were native Chinese speakers participated (28 in 50msSOA Naming, 28 in 200msSOA Naming, 24 in 50msSOA LDT, 25 in 200msSOA LDT).

Chart1 Priming effect in low frequency target word.

0

10

20

30

40

50

50ms SOA 200ms SOA

Exp1 Nam

Exp1 LDT

Exp2 Nam

Exp2 LDT

Exp 1

Participants

In the Exp 1, 105 National Taiwan University students who were native Chinese speakers participated (26 in 50msSOA Naming, 29 in 200msSOA Naming, 25 in 50msSOA LDT, 25 in 200msSOA LDT).

Design & materials

■ The design was a 2(target word frequency) x 2(SOA, 50ms and 200ms) x 3(priming condition), with all three factors being within-subjects.

■There are 3 priming conditions（ radical phonetic, compound word, & control） as designed in Zhou and Marslen-Wilson (1999).

Procedure

Primed naming and Primed LDT.

Result

■ Semantic priming effect of phonetic radical was observed in LDT, not in Naming （ but had a tendency of priming） .

■ There were no differences of priming between different SOA.

Design & materials

The same with Exp 1, except the radical prime condition was removed.

Procedure

The Same as Exp 1.

Result

■ A weak semantic priming effect of phonetic radical was observed in LDT, while none was found in Naming （ no tendency） .

■ No difference of priming effects between different SOA was observed.

General discussion■ Semantic priming effect of phonetic radical was easily observed in LDT, indicating radical processing was easily induced in LDT.

■ In naming, semantic priming effect of phonetic radical was not so reliably observed as shown by Zhou and Marslen-Wilson (1999).The effect may be not automatic.