The Contribution Of Semantic Radicals To Chinese Character Recognition:Evidence From Event-Related Potential Recording

Word recognition is a complex cognitive process involving orthography,phonology and meaning.Previous studies have shown that semantic radical of Chinese character plays an important role in Chinese character recognition.Furthermore,the semantic relationship between semantic radicals and the whole characters was divided into two dimensions,namely,related or unrelated relationship.However,The researchers proposed that the semantic relationship between semantic radicals and the whole characters were not just related or unrelated.In the present study,manipulating the semantic relationship between semantic radicals and the whole characters and the SOA,we used a prime paradigm combined with lexical decision task to systematically examine the role of semantic radicals in Chinese word recognition.Five levels of semantic consistencies were identified including close,moderate,low,form only and control.The SOA was divided into three levels including 57 ms,140ms and 243 ms.The study consisted of three experiments.In the first experiment,the priming lexical decision task was used to investigate the influence of semantic relationship between semantic radicals and the whole characters in Chinese character recognition.The second investigated the time process of semantic activation under different levels of semantic relationship between semantic radicals and the whole characters.On the basis of the first one,EEG technology was used to investigate the neural mechanism on the influence of semantic radicals in Chinese character recognition.The results of the presents study were given as follow:(1)Semantic radicals had an important impact on Chinese character recognition.There were different levels of semantic relationship between semantic radicals and whole words.The close and moderate condition can promote the recognition of Chinese characters more quickly.(2)The process of semantic radicals in Chinses characters recognition was related to P200 and N400 components.The higher semantic relationship semantic radicals related to the whole character,the larger the P200 component and the smaller the N400 component will be.