A study of the role of structural configuration in visual recognition of Chinese characters using primed lexical decision task

Abstract

The Lexicality Constituency Model (LCM) (Perfetti, Liu and Tan, 2006) postulated the role of structural configuration in Chinese character recognition, however, with no concluding evidence from past research. To investigate the role of configuration, a primed lexical decision task was used. The configuration and the radicals of the primes were manipulated. Behavioral data and electrophysiological data were collected from 34 Cantonese-speaking individuals. The behavioral results indicated an interdependent relationship of radicals and configuration, whereby the effect of radical similarity was only exhibited when the primes had the same configuration as the targets. Interestingly, the electrophysiological results suggested that the effect of radicals and configuration were independent of each other. A modified LCM was thus proposed to account for the present findings.