Temporaland Spatial Integration Of Character Order Encoding In Chinese Compound Words

Visual word identification is a basic process in reading that requires readers to assess the identity and position of the letters in a word available within the visual fields.We investigate the character order encoding of Chinese compound words and pseudowords in this dissertation,especially on the temporal and spatial dynamics of the character order process.The contents are divided into four parts shown as follows.Firstly,we explored the impact of character order encoding within Chinese compound words on the magnitude of the attentional blink(AB).The AB is the phenomenon in which the identification of the second of two targets is attenuated if it is presented less than 500 ms after the first target.In the present study,we examined the processing of character order in a rapid serial visual presentation(RSVP)paradigm using two-character Chinese compound words in which the two characters were transposed to form meaningful words or meaningless combinations(reversible,transposed or canonical words).We found that when two Chinese characters that form a compound word,regardless of their order,are presented in an RSVP sequence,the likelihood of an AB for the second character is greatly reduced or eliminated compared to when the two characters constitute separate words rather than a compound word.Moreover,the order of the report for the two characters is more likely to be reversed when the normal order of the two characters in a compound word is reversed,especially when the interval between the presentation of the two characters is extremely short.These findings are more consistent with the cognitive strategy hypothesis than the resource-limited hypothesis during character decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words.These results suggest that compound characters are perceived as a unit,character order is not strictly encoded.The data further suggest that readers could easily understand the text with character transpositions in compound words during Chinese reading.Secondly,we examined the temporal course of character order encoding in Chinese word recognition.Previous studies revealed that the character position encoding occurred at an early processing stage in Chinese reading.However,the exact time course of character order encoding within Chinese compound words remains underspecified.In this study,we assess the time course of character order encoding intwo-character Chinese compound words(canonical,transposed or reversible words)compared with pseudowords using dual-target RSVP of stimuli appearing at 30 ms per character with no inter-stimulus interval.The results showed that the first identified constituent morpheme of two-character Chinese compound words facilitated identification of the second character across all values of stimulus onset asynchrony(SOA)in three word conditions,but identification of the first character suppressed recognition of the second character in the pseudoword conditions.The accuracy rates in the transposed word category were lower than in the canonical and reversible word categories.Additionally,the proportion of order reversals decreased across SOAs until approximately 180 ms in the canonical and reversible word categories,but until approximately 240 ms in the transposed word category.Taken together,these findings indicate that readers can easily identify words with character transpositions;however,a transposition cost is involved in identifying transposed words compared to canonical words.The holistic representation of the base word is activated,but nevertheless the order of the two constituent characters is not strictly processed during the very early stage of visual word processing.Thirdly,we investigated the character decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words(canonical and transposed words)and pseudowords in the left and right visual fields,using a dual-target RSVP task.The first character was always centrally presented,and the second character was randomly presented at different locations(0°,2°,4°,6° in the left and right visual fields)and randomly separated by varying time intervals(100,300,500 and 700 ms).The results confirmed a right visual field superiority for canonical words,but this advantage vanished for transposed words.The findings further indicated that the same quality of lexical processing could be obtained from the foveal and parafoveal regions of the right and left visual fields,regardless of the character order,but not in the periphery of the right visual field.Moreover,the proportion of order reversals peaked at the central position and the shortest exposure time,but it declined with increasing eccentricity and time interval.We concluded that the character transposition of Chinese compound words was significantly sensitive in the periphery of the right visual field.Furthermore,the character order errors were mainly encoded in the foveal vision with a duration of 100 ms,which suggested that the order of the foveally presented Chinese characters was more likely to be reversed at the early stage of visual word processing.Finally,we explored the character decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words(canonical and transposed words)and pseudowords in the upper and lower visual fields,using a dual-target RSVP task.The first character was always centrally presented,and the second character was randomly presented at different locations(0°,2°,4°,6° in the upper and lower visual fields)and randomly separated by varying time intervals(100,300,500 and 700 ms).The results confirmed a lower hemifield advantage for canonical words,while this superiority vanished for transposed words.In addition,the proportion of order reversals peaked at the central position and the shortest exposure time.The data,taken together,indicated that the character order encoding of compound words was sensitive in the lower visual field,and the character order errors mainly occurred at 0° eccentricity with a duration of 100 ms in vertical visual fields.In sum,we concluded that the character transposition process of Chinese compound words contributed to the elimination of AB.Character order errors in Chinese compound words was encoded during the early stage of visual word processing,mainly during the period from 30 to 180 ms.Additionally,the character order encoding of Chinese compound words was relatively sensitive in the right and lower visual fields,and the character order errors mainly occurred at 0° eccentricity with a duration of 100 ms in the visual fields.Taken together,the order of the two constituent characters of Chinese compound words is not strictly processed during the very early stage of visual word processing.