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Inhibitory stroke neighbour priming in character recognition and reading in Chinese

Inhibitory stroke neighbour priming in character recognition and reading in Chinese
Inhibitory stroke neighbour priming in character recognition and reading in Chinese
In alphabetic languages, prior exposure to a target word's orthographic neighbour influences word recognition in masked priming experiments and the process of word identification that occurs during normal reading. We investigated whether similar neighbour priming effects are observed in Chinese in 4 masked priming experiments (employing a forward mask and 33-ms, 50-ms, and 67-ms prime durations) and in an experiment that measured eye movements while reading. In these experiments, the stroke neighbour of a Chinese character was defined as any character that differed by the addition, deletion, or substitution of one or two strokes. Prime characters were either stroke neighbours or stroke non-neighbours of the target character, and each prime character had either a higher or a lower frequency of occurrence in the language than its corresponding target character. Frequency effects were observed in all experiments, demonstrating that the manipulation of character frequency was successful. In addition, a robust inhibitory priming effect was observed in response times for target characters in the masked priming experiments and in eye fixation durations for target characters in the reading experiment. This stroke neighbour priming was not modulated by the relative frequency of the prime and target characters. The present findings therefore provide a novel demonstration that inhibitory neighbour priming shown previously for alphabetic languages is also observed for nonalphabetic languages, and that neighbour priming (based on stroke overlap) occurs at the level of the character in Chinese.
inhibitory stroke neighbours, masked priming, eye movements, chinese reading
1747-0218
2149-2171
Wang, Jingxin
cb063077-a2a8-4f8f-81c2-c50df1fd2337
Tian, Jing
b4a68b28-947b-45be-a00d-9ac6190450a4
Han, Weijin
d0da8e98-5126-493e-8967-4b45986754c8
Liversedge, Simon P.
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Paterson, Kevin B.
4da4f2c5-542a-4a64-9b7e-f4f8380a60e1
Wang, Jingxin
cb063077-a2a8-4f8f-81c2-c50df1fd2337
Tian, Jing
b4a68b28-947b-45be-a00d-9ac6190450a4
Han, Weijin
d0da8e98-5126-493e-8967-4b45986754c8
Liversedge, Simon P.
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Paterson, Kevin B.
4da4f2c5-542a-4a64-9b7e-f4f8380a60e1

Wang, Jingxin, Tian, Jing, Han, Weijin, Liversedge, Simon P. and Paterson, Kevin B. (2014) Inhibitory stroke neighbour priming in character recognition and reading in Chinese. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67 (11), 2149-2171. (doi:10.1080/17470218.2014.909507). (PMID:24773283)

Record type: Article

Abstract

In alphabetic languages, prior exposure to a target word's orthographic neighbour influences word recognition in masked priming experiments and the process of word identification that occurs during normal reading. We investigated whether similar neighbour priming effects are observed in Chinese in 4 masked priming experiments (employing a forward mask and 33-ms, 50-ms, and 67-ms prime durations) and in an experiment that measured eye movements while reading. In these experiments, the stroke neighbour of a Chinese character was defined as any character that differed by the addition, deletion, or substitution of one or two strokes. Prime characters were either stroke neighbours or stroke non-neighbours of the target character, and each prime character had either a higher or a lower frequency of occurrence in the language than its corresponding target character. Frequency effects were observed in all experiments, demonstrating that the manipulation of character frequency was successful. In addition, a robust inhibitory priming effect was observed in response times for target characters in the masked priming experiments and in eye fixation durations for target characters in the reading experiment. This stroke neighbour priming was not modulated by the relative frequency of the prime and target characters. The present findings therefore provide a novel demonstration that inhibitory neighbour priming shown previously for alphabetic languages is also observed for nonalphabetic languages, and that neighbour priming (based on stroke overlap) occurs at the level of the character in Chinese.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 19 December 2013
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 April 2014
Published date: 2014
Keywords: inhibitory stroke neighbours, masked priming, eye movements, chinese reading

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 363351
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/363351
ISSN: 1747-0218
PURE UUID: ce6c93f7-9048-4b1e-8914-67e8e1a3bd03

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Date deposited: 24 Mar 2014 16:14
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 16:23

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Contributors

Author: Jingxin Wang
Author: Jing Tian
Author: Weijin Han
Author: Simon P. Liversedge
Author: Kevin B. Paterson

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