Abstract
This paper is a contribution to the study of whether visual contact with lexical units in any writing system necessarily arouses their corresponding phonological information. In two experiments it was investigated whether phonological information is automatically activated during the semantic processing of Chinese characters. In these experiments, both using a semantic-categorization task, subjects produced the same proportion of false positive categorization errors and showed the same decision latencies on homophone foils and their non-homophonic controls, thus indicating that phonological information does not seem to affect the semantic task. Experiment 2 further revealed that subjects made more errors and produced longer response times on graphemically similar foils than on the corresponding controls. The absence of phonological effects and the presence of clear effects of visual similarity for Chinese characters in semantic tasks can be taken to indicate that phonological information may not be automatically activated during the processing of meanings of Chinese characters. The present results also cast serious doubts on the hypothesis that phonological activation is a universal principle of lexical processing.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Battig, W. F., & Montague, W. E. (1969). Category norms for verbal learning items in 56 categories.Journal of Experimental Psychology Monographs.80 (3, Pt. 2), 1–45.
Besner, D., & Hildebrandt, N. (1987). Orthographic and phonological codes in the oral reading of Japanese kana.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 335–343.
Chen, H.-C. (in press). Chinese reading and comprehension: A cognitive psychology perspective. In M. H. Bond (Ed.).,Handbook of Chinese psychology. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Chen, H.-C. (1992). Reading comprehension in Chinese: Implications from character reading times. In H.-C. Chen & O. J. L. Tzeng (Eds.), Language processing in Chinese (pp. 175–205). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Chen, H.-C., & Juola, J. F. (1982). Dimensions of lexical coding in Chinese and English.Memory & Cognition.10, 216–224.
Chen, H.-C., & Tsoi, K.-C. (1990). Symbol-word interference in Chinese and English.Acta Psychologica, 75, 123–138.
Cheng, C.-M. (1982). Analysis of present day Mandarin.Journal of Chinese Linguistics.10, 282–358.
Cheng, C.-M. (1992). Lexical access in Chinese: Evidence from automatic activation of phonological information. In H.-C. Chen & O. J. L. Tzeng (Eds.), Language processing in Chinese (pp. 67–91). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simple reading tasks. In G. Underwood (Ed.), Strategies of information processing (pp. 151–216). London: Academic Press.
Erickson, D., Mattingly, I. G., & Turvey, M. T. (1977). Phonetic activity and reading: An experiment with kanji.Language and Speech.20, 384–403.
Feldman, L. B., & Turvey, M. T. (1983). Word recognition in Serbo-Croation is phonologically analytic.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 9, 288–298.
Flores d'Arcais, G. B. (1992). Graphemic, phonological, and semantic activation processes during the recognition of Chinese characters. In H.-C. Chen & O. J. L. Tzeng (Eds.), Language processing in Chinese (pp. 37–66). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Forster, K. I., & Chambers, S. M. (1973). Lexical access and naming time.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior.12, 627–635.
Frost, R., Katz, L., & Bentin, S. (1987). Strategies for visual word recognition and orthographical depth: A multilingual comparison.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 104–115.
Henderson, L. (1982). Orthography and word recognition in reading. London: Academic Press.
Hong Kong Education Department. (1986).Frequency count of Chinese words used in Hong Kong secondary school reading materials. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press.
Hue, C.-W. (1992). Recognition processes in character naming. In Chen H.-C. & Tzeng O. J. L. (Eds.), Language processing in Chinese (pp. 93–107). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Hung, D. L., & Tzeng, O. J. L. (1981). Orthographic variations and visual information processing.Psychological Bulletin, 90, 377–414.
Jared, D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1991). Does word identification proceed from spelling to sound to meaning?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120; 358–394.
Jeng, C. I., Lai, M. W.; & Liu, I. M. (1973). Category norms in Chinese and English from bilingual subjects.Acta Psychologica Taiwanica, 15, 81–153.
Katz, L., & Feldman, L. B. (1983). Relation between pronunciation and recognition of printed words in deep and shallow orthographies.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9, 157–166.
Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The reading process is different for different orthographies: The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis. In R. Frost & L. Katz(Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology and meaning (pp. 67–84). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Kimura, Y. (1984). Concurrent vocal interference: Its effects on Kana and Kanji.Quarterly Journal of Psychology, 36A, 117–131.
Kimura, Y., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Reading and writing in English and Japanese: A crosscultural study of young children.British Journal of Developmental Psychology.1, 143–154.
Lam, A., Perfetti, C. A., & Bell, L. (1991). Automatic phonetic transfer in bidialectal reading.Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics.12, 299–311.
Lukatela, G., Lukatela, K., Carello, C., & Turvey, M. T. (1993). Reduction in Alphabet priming with delay and degradation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 1094–1100.
Lukatela, G., Lukatela, K., & Turvey, M. T. (1993). Further evidence for phonological constraints on visual lexical access: TOWED primes FROG.Perception & Psychophysics, 53, 461–466.
Patterson, K. E., & Morton, J. (1985). From orthography to phonology: An attempt at an old interpretation. In K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall, & M. Coltheart (Eds.), Surface dyslexia: Neuropsychological and cognitive studies of phonological reading (pp. 335–359). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Perfetti, C. A., Bell, L., & Delaney, S. (1988). Automatic phonetic activation in silent word reading: Evidence from backward masking.Journal of Memory and Language.27, 59–70.
Perfetti, C. A., & Zhang, S. (1991). Phonological processes in reading Chinese characters.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 633–643.
Perfetti, C. A., Zhang, S., & Berent, I. (1992). Reading in English and Chinese: Evidence for a “universal” phonological principle. In R. Frost & L. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning (pp. 227–48). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Seidenberg, M. S. (1985). The time course of phonological code activation in two writing systems.Cognition, 19, 1–30.
Van Orden, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound and reading.Memory & Cognition, 15, 181–198.
Van Orden, G. C., Johnston, J. C., & Hale, B. L. (1988). Word identification in reading proceeds from spelling to sound to meaning.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 371–385.
Van Orden, G. C., Pennington, B. F., & Stone, G. O. (1990). Word identification in reading and the promise of subsymbolic psycholinguistics.Psychological Review, 97, 488–522.
Wydell, N., Patterson, K. E., & Humphreys, G. W. (1993). Phonologically mediated access to meaning for Kanji: Is aRows still aRose in Japanese Kanji?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 491–514.
Zhou, Y. G. (1978). To what degree are the “phonetics” of presentday Chinese characters still phonetic?Zhongguo Yuwen.146, 172–177.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chen, HC., Flores d'Arcais, G.B. & Cheung, SL. Orthographic and phonological activation in recognizing Chinese characters. Psychol. Res 58, 144–153 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00571102
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00571102