Are compound radicals independently processed in Chinese character recognition?

Abstract

A masked priming lexical decision task was conducted to investigate the presence of compound radical representations as an independent processing unit in Chinese character recognition. Prime type (simple radical prime and compound radical prime) and prime duration (48 ms, 64 ms, and 80 ms) were manipulated. Thirty-five native Cantonese-speaking undergraduates and fresh graduates participated in the study. Participants were asked to determine whether the character presented was a real or pseudo-character using a response box. Results shown that increasing the prime duration of related simple radical primes did not lead to any difference of response time; thus the expected interaction between prime type and prime duration was not found. These findings suggested that compound radicals were not represented during Chinese character recognition, consistent with the conclusions of Taft and Zhu (1997) and Tam (2011).