The Processing Mechanism Of Psychological Word In Chinese Reading

Reading is an important cognitive activity in our daily life. Most of us obtain a great amount of information by reading. It is one of basic problems that what the primary units of information are in Chinese reading. In the alphabetical writing system (such as English), word boundaries are marked by spaces, it is uncontroversial that word is the basic primary units of information. But Chinese script uses characters with square-shaped forms of different levels of visual complexity as basic writing units, and there are no obvious visual cues like space between words. Therefore, it's in dispute for what the basic primary units of information are in Chinese reading. Till now, there are four main academic viewpoints:(1) Chinese reading is based on character;(2) Chinese reading is based on words;(3) Chinese reading is based on the combination of character and word;(4) Chinese reading is based on chunks or phrases. From the previous studies, we found that most of research supported the second view, whereas some research indicated that the Chinese readers did not agree on how to divide the continuous string of characters within a sentence into words. The readers did not have a clear concept about word. Therefore, we thought it was inappropriate to draw a conclusion that word was the primary units of information. Based on the previous studies, we put forward the concept of psychological word which means that it was the semantic unit represented in the process of reading. It could represent complete meaning. We proposed that psychological word was the basic primary units of information. Then we conducted three studies, five sub-experiments to explore the following three issues:(1) whether psychological word was psychologically real in reader'mind;(2) whether psychological word was easier to be processed,(3) how the readers processed the constituents of psychological word.The first research aimed to test whether psychological word was psychologically real by investigating how Chinese readers cognized the word. Experiment1explored the discrepancies between undergraduates from non-Chinese Language and Literature Department and postgraduates from Chinese Language and Literature Department by using word segmentation task. The results showed that there were great discrepancies between undergraduates and postgraduates, the former marked significantly more boundaries in the text. When using Modern Chinese Dictionary as word segmentation criteria, compared with the postgraduates, the undergraduates had more discrepancies, longer psychological word, and intended to regard more phrases as words. Experiment2(including experiment2a and2b) explored how Chinese readers distinguished words from phrases for the two-character and four-character structure by asking the readers whether they were a whole word or a phrase. The results indicated that it was difficult for the Chinese readers to discriminate between words and phrases, and they were inclined to regard phrases as a word. The results demonstrated that the readers did not have a clear concept about word, they could not distinguish words from phrases particularly. They also indicated that psychological word was psychologically real in readers'mind.The second research explored whether psychological word was much easier to be processed when psychological word presented separately or inserted in a sentence. It included experiment3(experiment3a and3b) and experiment4(experiment4a and4b). Experiment3a investigated whether two-character psychological words were processed more efficiently by using lexical decision task. The type of psychological word was manipulated in three conditions:psychological word Ⅰ referred to the two-character structure defined as a word by grammar and judgment subjectively, psychological word Ⅱ referred to those defined as a word by judgment subjectively and in fact they were phrases defined by grammar, nonwords referred to two characters that could not form a word. The results showed that there was no RT difference between psychological word Ⅱ and psychological word Ⅰ, but the RT of these two conditions was shorter than nonwords. The results indicated that psychological word Ⅰ and Ⅱ had the same pattern of processing. For accuracy rate, there were no significant differences among the three conditions. Experiment3b investigated whether four-character psychological words were processed more efficiently by using rapid presentation naming task. There were four conditions: psychological word condition, two-word condition, half psychological word condition, and nonword condition. The results showed that the accuracy rate of psychological word was higher than the other three conditions, the accuracy rate of recognizing character in the words was higher than in the nonwords, furthermore, characters could be recognized to some extent in parallel, with efficiency decreasing gradually from left to right. Experiment4a and4b investigated whether two-character or four-character psychological words were easier than dictionary-defined words to be processed by recording the readers'eye movements. They used a highlighting manipulation to create four conditions:normal text, text with highlighting to mark psychological words, text with highlighting used to mark words, and text with highlighting that yielded nonwords. Only the target areas were manipulated. The results showed that gaze duration was shorter under two-character psychological words condition than other three conditions, but gaze duration and total reading time were shorter under four-character psychological word condition than dictionary-defined words. Therefore, the superiority of psychological word processing was more obvious for four-character psychological words. In all, the second research indicated that psychological words were easier to be processed when presented separately or in a sentence. Then we could draw a conclusion that psychological word was likely to be the basic primary units of information in Chinese reading.The third research explored the pattern of processing the constituents of four-character psychological words. Using the boundary paradigm, the boundary was set between the second character and the third character which formed two conditions—normal condition and ambiguous condition. The preview of the third character was either correct (normal condition) or forming a word with the second character (ambiguous condition). When the eyes moved across the boundary, the previewed character was changed to its correct form. We found that the word formed by the second character and the preview character was activated which indicated that the constituents of psychological word was to some extent processed in parallel and supported multiple activation hypothesis.Based on our studies, we could obtain three main conclusions. Firstly, the Chinese readers had no clear concept about word in Chinese reading. They segmented words according to their own complex cognitive representations which indicated that psychological word was psychological real. Secondly, psychological word was processed more efficiently, in particular for four-character psychological word. What's more, the characters were recognized in parallel partly. Therefore, we concluded that psychological word was the basic primary unit of information. Lastly, the processing of the constituents of four-character words were activated in parallel, which fitted better with the theoretical assumptions of multiple activation hypothesis.