Pinyin And Writing:Neural Correlates Of Word Recognition In Chinese Second Language Acquisition

Does reading in different writing systems involve the same neural mechanisms? While most recent studies supported the universality hypothesis,we believe that each language and writing system has its own specific characteristics,which should be reflected in the brain.Chinese,compared to alphabet writing systems,is unique in its phonology-orthography mapping,character structure,and mediation of pinyin spelling and character writing during reading acquisition,even when we only consider singleword reading.In this study,we investigated the mechanisms underlying reading acquisition of Chinese as a second language(L2),using functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioral assessments.We aimed to understand(1)the effects of pinyin and writing strategies during reading acquisition;(2)whether and how the knowledge about semantic radicals(character components carrying semantic information)could be generalized;and(3)the process of visual-auditory integration in word recognition,and its differences between the two strategies.Our results showed that(1)after a seven-day training period,the recognition rate of trained one-character words increased significantly across modalities(visual,auditory,visual-auditory),no matter which strategy(pinyin only or joint pinyin-writing)was applied.Functional MRI data showed increased activations in the dorsal pathway in visual and visual-auditory modalities after training,in both groups.(2)The recognition rate and reaction times for untrained one-character words also improved significantly.While pinyin-only group showed increased activations in right occipital and parietal areas,this generalization involves bilateral parietal regions in joint pinyin-writing group.(3)The conjunction analysis across modalities showed visual-auditory integration of trained one-character words in both groups,but is differently lateralized.Pinyin-only group involved bilateral parietal regions,while joint pinyin-writing group activated the left parietal and middle frontal gyrus.Therefore,we suggest that while pinyin and writing strategies can facilitate word recognition,different neural bases are involved: learning with pinyin shows a similar pattern to that of alphabetic systems,which mainly relies on top-down phonological information retrieval;whereas writing strategy rather involves regions underlying visualspatial processing,motor perception and integration.At the same time,readers can benefit from and generalize their knowledge about semantic radicals,specifically when they are trained with the writing strategy.Finally,pinyin and writing strategies have different contributions to visual-auditory integration,the process of which plays an important role in word recognition.