The Role Of Semantic And Phonological Priming In The Semantic Processing Of Blurred Targets

Vocabulary recognition refers to the process by the channels which people receive information about graphic or phonetic sounds,such as visual or auditory channels,to obtain vocabulary spelling,pronunciation,syntax,and semantic information(Chen Baolin,Peng Danling,2000).In the process of vocabulary recognition,many related factors will affect it,including the frequency of Chinese characters,regularity,semantics,phonological,and the quality of stimuli related to graphic.Chinese characters have the characteristics of graphic,phonological,and semantics.The role of Chinese characters in graphic,pronunciation,and semantics in vocabulary recognition has been explained in many related studies,but the results aren't consistent.First,the stimulus quality effect related to graphic,it refers that compared with blurred stimuli,subjects respond to clear stimuli are faster and have higher ACC.About semantics studies,such as the semantic priming effect,means that subjects respond to semantically related pairs more faster than non-semantically related pairs and have higher ACC.There are inconsistent results in phonological studies,Some studies find that phonological has no effect in the process of Chinese character recognition,and that the semantic is directly extracted from the graphic(Chen,1988);Some studies find that in the process of Chinese characters recognition,phonological plays an intermediary role(Leck,1995),and some researchers have proposed a dual-channel theory that combines the two theories,and believe that there are both direct processing of extracting semantics from graphic.And phonological plays the intermediary role,so the recognition processing is graphic-phonological-semantic(Jared,1991).Previous studies in English words also found that semantic priming and stimulus quality interacted in response time.The priming effect of blurred stimulus was greater than that of clear stimulus(Meyer,et al.,1975),and Holcomb(1993)also found that there was an interaction between semantic priming and stimulus quality in response time,but no interaction was found in the N400.Studies on Chinese characters have found that there is interaction between semantic priming and stimulus quality in response time and on N400(Sun Haijing,Wang Quanhong,2012;Dong Jing,2014),this is different from the results of Holcomb's(1993)on N400,the N400 is an indicator that reflects the semantic processing of vocabulary.The results of Holcomb(1993)show that the semantic processing of vocabulary will not be affected by the processing of graphic,because there is no interaction between semantic priming and the quality of stimulation,and graphic and semantic processing are not in the same stage,so they support multistage activation models;while Chinese character researches believe that graphic and semantic processing are in the same stage,supporting Interaction Activation Model.However,most of the experimental tasks used in the study of Chinese characters are the same word judgment task,and the stimulus quality of the materials are blurred levels 5 and6,respectively,which is different from the study of Holcomb's(1993).Therefore,the experiment in this study strictly controls the experimental tasks and materials.The study 1 used the vocabulary judgment task and the material stimulus quality,clear and blurred 6,which is the same as Holcomb's(1993)to explore whether the interaction effects of semantic priming and stimulus quality are different in Chinese and English materials,and to verify the Interaction Activation Model.Experiment 1 used a vocabulary judgment task,combined with the semantic priming paradigm,and using 2(clear vs.blurred)× 2(semantic priming vs.non-semantic priming)two-factor within-subject design.It was found that the interaction between semantic priming and stimulus quality was significant in the accuracy rate and response time.Further analysis on the accuracy rate found that no matter the semantic priming or the non-semantic priming,the differences between clear and blurred were significant,but for the semantic priming,the F value of the variance is greater than the non-semantic priming,that is,the stimulus quality effect under the semantic priming is greater.According to the mean difference between the semantic and non-semantic in clear and blurred words,the semantic priming may promote the recognition of clear words;further analysis on the response time found that the difference between clear and blurred words is more significant in the semantic priming conditions than the non-semantic priming.In the EEG results,the indicator N400 reflecting semantic processing was the main analysis component.The results found that: the interaction between semantic priming and stimulus quality was significant.Further analysis found that,compared with non-semantic priming,the difference between clear and blurred words is more significant in semantic priming.The results of Experiment 1 showed that there was an interaction between semantic initiation and stimulus quality in response time and EEG data,According to the additive factors logic of Sternberg's(1969),there is interaction between semantic initiation and stimulus quality,then the graphic and semantic is in the same processing stage,which means that vocabulary processing is series mode that semantic is directly extract from graphic,which is consistent with the Interactive Activation Model.And this is inconsistent with the results of Holcomb(1993)in English,but consistent with the results of Chinese studies(Sun Haijing & Wang Quanhong,2012;Dong Jing,2014),probably because English belongs to phonetic writing and has obvious GPC rules,English words must be processed by phonological for semantic extraction.Chinese characters are ideogram characters,and there are no obvious GPC rules,so the phonological isn't important.However,some studies have found that phonological plays a role in vocabulary access(GuoTaomei,2004).What exactly does it do?Experiment 2 and Experiment 1 used the same task,combined with the phonological priming paradigm,using two factors: 2(clear vs.blurred)× 2(voice activation vs.no voice activation).The experiment design is different from previous experiments in this experiment.The target word was activated by phonological priming.It was found that: in the accuracy rate,the interaction effect of phonological priming and stimulus quality was significant,but the response time was not significant.Further analysis of the accuracy rate found that the difference between clear and blurred was significant under the conditions of phonological priming and no phonological priming,but under the phonological priming conditions,the F value was smaller than that without phonological priming.According to the difference in the mean value,the average difference between the clear and the blurred words of phonological priming was smaller than that of no phonological priming,indicating that phonological priming may decrease the difference between the clear and blurred words and the ACC average of clear words in the phonological priming is0.92,it showed that phonological priming maybe promote the recognition of blurred target words,or it was very easy to recognize the clear words,so the phonological priming effect in clear words wasn't significant,in other words,there's a “ceiling effect”.On the EEG data,the analysis of P200 found that the interaction between phonological activation and stimulus quality was significant.Further analysis found that compared with the absence of phonological priming,there was a significant difference between clear and blurred words under phonological priming.The analysis of N400 also found that the interaction between phonological activation and stimulus quality was significant.Further analysis found that compared with the absence of phonological priming,there was a significant difference between between clear and blurred words under phonological priming,it showed that the interaction between phonological priming and stimulus quality was significant in the ACC and the EEG data,indicates that the graphic and the phonological was in the same processing stage,and the small activation of the graphic can directly lead to the activation of the phonological,through the phonological reach the meaning at last,which support the processing through the graphic-phonological-semantic of the phonological intermediary channel.According to the results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2,the results of Experiment 1conformed to the interactive activation model,and the vocabulary processing was to directly reach the meaning through the graphic and the results of Experiment 2 showed that the vocabulary processing may be connected through the graphic-phonological-semantic of the phonological intermediary channel.It shows that the vocabulary have two channels for processing,named the graphic-semantic straight path and the graphic-phonological-semantic of the phonological intermediary path.The results of this study provide evidence for the dual-channel theoretical model.