Word recognition and reading in Chinese

An important issue in contemporary studies of reading is whether (and, if so, how) different writing systems affect the cognitive processes involved in reading. The current view is that reading in non-alphabetic and alphabetic orthographies may involve similar cognitive processes. Starting from current word recognition models, established for alphabetic languages, the present thesis provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of word recognition and reading in Chinese.
The thesis first proposes that the orthographic units of Chinese words are the smallest-stroke- patterns, rather than individual strokes as conventionally thought. Over 90% of Chinese words are compounds (called ZI in Chinese), constructed from the combination of primitive ideographs. The two major orthographic components, termed the lexical radical and the non-radical component are essential components of such compound words. Secondly, this thesis proposes two orthographic rules called the Part-to-Whole Phonological correspondence rule and semantic correspondence rule. These rules specify that the lexical radical and the nonradical component of a word are the semantic and phonetic components, respectively. Thirdly, the thesis proposes that pronunciation of Chinese may be achieved via the rule-defined phonetic component, according to two phonological recoding rules called "derivation" and "analogy".
The empirical analysis (ten experiments) explores visual, phonological and semantic processing of Chinese words (single characters) through simple comparison tasks. Visual matching of Chinese words shows that the orthographic units used by skilled native readers are stroke-patterns, not the individual strokes. As in English, a direct route from print to sound and another from print to meaning also exist in Chinese. Subjects (skilled Chinese readers) also showed a selective attentional bias toward the rule-defined semantic and phonetic components, respectively, in semantic and phonological comparison tasks. This attentional bias was stronger for the non-radical component, in phonological comparison tasks. This was confirmed by lexical decision on two-word phrases (called CI). The attentional bias in the lexical decision task was asymmetrical, and was found only on the non-radical component. It is proposed that lexical decomposition may involve segmenting the non-radical component away from the lexical radical, while leaving the lexical radical as a fixed base.
In an approach toward reading larger units, the last experiment investigated lexical decision with two-character CI. This experiment investigated not only the effects of word-frequency, concreteness and homophony but also their differential effects in individual subjects, as indices of reading strategies. The lexical decision performance of skilled Chinese readers was significantly correlated with individual subject's susceptibility to frequency and concreteness effects but not with homophone effect. As a reading strategy, a bias towards semantic recoding is correlated with faster performance while a phonological strategy is correlated with slower performance. These two strategies themselves had an inverse association. Lexical decomposition as an optional strategy was significantly associated with the phonological strategy.
Finally, the present thesis develops an analytic account of word recognition and reading in Chinese. Implications are drawn for both experimental studies of normal reading and neuropsychological studies of dyslexia in Chinese.

Advisor: Marshall, J
Allport, D
Allport, A
Marshall, D