A paradigm for studies to investigate the visuo-orthographic decoding of Chinese characters with sublexical clues
Creators: name: Yang, Zhirui
name: Yang, Jingwen
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 470499
subject: Linguistics not elsewhere classified
classificationCode: 470303
subject: Chinese languages
classificationCode: 470401
subject: Applied linguistics and educational linguistics

description: Differing from alphabetic writing, Chinese character is composed of strokes and sub-character components that are packed into a square configuration, possessing a high, nonlinear visual complexity (McBride, 2016). Over 80% of Chinese characters are compounds, in which independent constituents called radicals can be identified as the sublexical units. (Chen et al., 1995). According to the unique spatial features, the visual recognition of Chinese prints possesses a different processing mechanism (Chen &amp; Juola, 1982; Chen et al., 1995; Chen &amp; Shu, 2001). It can be divided into hierarchical steps from the sublexcial level to the character level to the word level. The underlying step is the visual-orthographic decoding of radical. It has been proved that sublexical processing of radicals is involved in the recognition of Chinese characters (Zhou et al., 2009).To investigate how the different-level radical dominances will be represented in visual spatial decoding, three groups of priming stimuli and target/distractor stimuli with the priming stimuli occupying different spatial proportions in the corresponding target stimuli were employed. The materials include priming stimuli which are radicals of Chinese characters, targets stimuli which are characters contains the priming corresponding radicals, and distractor stimuli which are characters contains a similar but not the same radical to the priming one. Three levels of radical dominance, referring to the spatial proportion of a priming radical in the target character, will be involved with 20 trials for each level. Radical dominance is defined as the spatial radio of the priming radical to the target character. Within the high-dominance condition, the radical dominance is 67.21% on average. The stroke number of target character is 7.25, and the stroke number of the corresponding distractor character is 7.6. Within the middle-dominance condition, the radical dominance is 40.62% on average. The stroke number of target character is 11.8, and the stroke number of the corresponding distractor character is 11.6. Within the low-dominance condition, the radical dominance is 21.26% on average. The stroke number of target character is 15.8, and the stroke number of the corresponding distractor character is 15.6.To test and control the influence by unrelated variables such as stroke number, character frequency, and so on, unpaired t-test was conducted to test the difference of the stroke number and character frequency between each two conditions (dominant levels). Paired t-test was conducted to test the difference of stroke number and character frequency between the target character and disturbing character within each condition (dominant level). The results shows that such unrelated variables are perfectly controlled.EEG experimentAll the character stimuli will be set in the font Microsoft Yahei, for this font can make characters more like a square formation. All the character stimuli will be displayed as white fonts in grey-scaled pictures, framed within an area of 300×300 pixels (6 cm×6 cm) on a 1920×1080-pixel background of screen size, with dark grey as the background color. A randomly passive viewing-selection task will be employed, with an EEG system recording the visual-task-related neural activity during the experiment. The experimental procedure was programmed with E-Prime 2.0 software. Participants were seated 80-100 cm away from the screen in a dimly lit and sound-attenuated room. No environmental disturbance was allowed during the experiment to ensure that participants were in stable condition. Before the task, the experimenter will follow a protocol to instruct participants to stare at the fixation point on the screen and pay attention to the materials and how to do the selection. A demonstration with 6 examples will be also displayed to the subjects in order to let them get familiar to the procedure and the task.Afterward, the task will begin. During the procedure, a priming stimulus, which is a radical, presents first for 1000ms, and after a random 600-1000ms interval with a fixation point, the target or distractor character presents for 1000ms and then it turns to the participants to judge if the following character contains the priming radical. After the subjects’ selection, one trial ends. Between each two trials, there will be a random interval of 800-1200ms. All the priming-target/distractor stimuli pairs will be repeated once randomly, comprising a total of 120 trials for the entire task. Considering the young age of the young participants and the time required to complete the tasks, the teachers or guardians were allowed to accompany their children during the tasks without communication or distractions in the process. During the task, the reaction time and accuracy for each trial will also be recorded for subsequent analysis. An example of the task procedure is shown in the introduction figure.<br>