The Time Course Of Orthographic And Phonological Processing During Visual Word Recognition In Chinese EFL Learners:An ERP Study

Reading is a complex cognitive skill unique to humans and its fundamental component is visual word recognition.However,research showed Chinese EFL(English as Foreign Language)beginners had difficulties in English word recognition.Previous studies revealed English word recognition is affected not only by orthography(written characteristics)but also by the phonology(spoken characteristics)of words.Evidence concerning the time course of orthographic and phonological processing is conducive to constructing the neurocognitive models of word recognition,which has positive implications for English vocabulary teaching.Therefore,this study tries to examine the time course of orthographic and phonological processing during visual word recognition in Chinese EFL learners using ERP(event-related potential).The study mainly addresses the following questions:(1)What is the time course of orthographic and phonological processing during visual word recognition in Chinese EFL learners?(2)How does English proficiency affect the time course of orthographic and phonological processing during visual word recognition?The experiment adopted the multi-factor within-subjects mixed design.Subjects included 16 senior high school students and 16 graduate students in Fuzhou.Adopting masked priming paradigm,five-letter high-frequency target words and its primes were manipulated in terms of orthographic and phonological overlap to examine orthographic and phonological processing.The whole process was recorded by ERP and repeated measures analysis of variance(ANOVA)was conducted in RStudio.The results suggested that on the P150 epoch,orthographic processing occurred at about 120 ms after the presentation of target stimuli,and continued on the N250 and N400 epochs.Whereas phonological processing emerged on the N250 and continued on the N400 epoch.Besides,orthographic processing induced larger amplitudes on the N400 epoch,which suggested that Chinese EFL learners paid more attention to orthographic information than the phonological one when accessing semantics.In addition,subjects with high English proficiency induced smaller amplitudes overall,and only underwent orthographic processing on the P150 and N250 epochs compared with those with low proficiency,indicating that high-level subjects have more efficient word recognition skills.Based on the aim of educational neuroscience,this study hopes to provide English teachers with some implications for vocabulary teaching and enhance their awareness of “knowing neuroscientific knowledge” so as to design teaching activities compatible with the rules of brain.