Cognitive and neural representation and processing for tone and non-tone languages

The goal of the current study is to examine two competing hypotheses: the Universal Phonological Principle Hypothesis versus the Universal Direct Access Hypothesis through the automatic phonological activation in Chinese word processing. The first hypothesis supports writing systems merely encoding their spoken languages while the second hypothesis supports writing systems encoding meanings. Experiment 1(a) Color Naming (naming the color of the character) found robust automatic phonological activation as in past research. Experiment 1(b) Color Judgment (judging whether the character color and the frame color are the same) indicates that readers had difficulty processing more than two sources of competitive information in word processing. Experiment 2(a) Color Decision (pressing a color key) showed that the Stroop effect for color characters remains while the Stroop effects for homophones disappeared when no verbal report was required. Experiment 2(b) Arithmetic Color Naming (naming the color of the character while holding a number in the working memory for later subtraction) further showed the same effect when the available cognitive resource for word processing is limited under naming. In conclusion, results from Experiment 1(a) and 1(b) showed automatic phonological activation while results from Experiment 2(a) and 2(b) did not.; To explain the contradictory results from the current study and literatures, the Universal Resource Constraint Hypothesis is introduced and its mathematic properties are described. The Universal Resource Constraint Hypothesis states that the phonology access in word recognition is contingent upon the available cognitive resource for word processing. Specifically, readers would "automatically" access phonology in word recognition when the available cognitive resources are enough for readers to process all information of the word (graphic forms, phonologies, and semantic meanings), as in the Experiment 1(a). When there is not enough available cognitive resources, readers would not access the phonology but still access the meaning, as in the Experiment 2(b). The failure of automatic phonological activation may be due to inactivating phonological route or a temporary blocking of the phonological route. Important issues raised by the current study and the application and further research directions of the Universal Resource Constraint Hypothesis are discussed.