Semantic effects on Chinese character recognition

Abstract

Two experiments investigated whether knowledge of semantic radicals has an effect on Chinese character recognition. Experiment 1 used a lexical decision task to manipulate character frequency and combinability of the semantic radical defined as the number of characters in which the semantic radical appears. The results showed effects of lexical status, character frequency and combinability and an interaction between combinability and frequency. The combinability manipulation had a larger effect for low frequency characters than high frequency characters. Participants were faster to respond to characters than pseudocharacters and high frequency characters containing lower combinability radicals. ERP data showed an effect of lexical status in early epochs (300-500ms) across posterior regions and across the whole head at later epochs (500-700ms). ERP data for the effects of frequency and semantic combinability found different patterns: an early frequency effect (300-500ms) and a relatively late combinability effect (500-700ms) that was strongest in left posterior regions. Low frequency and less combinable characters elicited the largest negative shifts in polarity. The findings suggest that behavioural effects of frequency and combinability emerge at different temporal and also spatial loci during lexical access. Experiment 2 extended these findings using a semantic categorization task. ERP data were comparable to Experiment 1, confirming the time course of frequency and combinability effects.