Psycholinguistic aspects of word recognition in Chinese orthography
Date
1998
Authors
Hwang, Kai-Yu
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Abstract
This thesis is a study of psycholinguistic aspects of word recognition in Chinese orthography, a writing system structured along a principle that is very different from alphabetic or syllabic ones. Because of its logographic nature, assumptions have been made that the reading of Chinese characters must be silent and require an orthography-specific mechanism, that is, it utilizes only a direct, visual route However, this assumption is not supported by most of the experimental studies reviewed here, such as studies of phonological recoding and the neurolinguistic evidence (hemispheric functioning).
With respect to phonology, there are two issues to be clarified, one concerns the recognition of single characters, the other has to do with the higher level of reading retention of the previously read material m working memory, syntactic parsing at both micro- and macro-levels, and semantic interpretation/integration of overall text. The componentiality inherent in most of the Chinese characters (semantic-phonetic compounds) allows the possibility for character readers to make use of the principle of analogy to get a character's pronunciation. Moreover, when it comes to reading a complete sentence or whole paragraph, sound recoding is regarded as part of the human information processing and as a universal strategy in sustaining the Short-Term Memory, regardless of the orthographic differences.
However, this does not mean that logographic and alphabetic orthographies are processed in exactly the same way. Memory research and various versions of the Stroop interference test suggest, for instance, the greater involvement of visual/spatial memory for characters. Words presented in logographs are interpreted and elaborated at the morphemic/semantic level so that visual traces seem to exert a greater power.
The results from hemispheric function research also lend support to the orthography-independent view that reading of Chinese demands phonological recoding. Since characters are also linguistic symbols, the processing of which require sequential analysis and different levels of abstraction, there is no reason to believe that they should be handled by a different part of the neural mechanism, that is, the right hemisphere.
Overall, this thesis looks at the similarities and differences between two different orthographies--Chinese and English,-- and advocates a common strategy for lexical access, the principle of analogy, in which visual and phonological pathways are equally emphasized and are interdependent.