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Eye-movement evidence for the mental representation of strokes in Chinese characters

Eye-movement evidence for the mental representation of strokes in Chinese characters
Eye-movement evidence for the mental representation of strokes in Chinese characters

Although strokes are the smallest identifiable units in Chinese words, the fact that they are often embedded within larger units (i.e., radicals and/or characters that comprise Chinese words) raises questions about how and even if strokes are separately represented in lexical memory. The present experiment examined these questions using a gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to manipulate the parafoveal preview of the first of two-character target words. Relative to a normal preview, the removal of whole strokes was more disruptive (i.e., resulting in longer looking times on targets) than the removal of an equivalent amount of visual information (i.e., number of pixels) from strokes located either in similar locations or throughout the entire character. These findings suggest that strokes are represented as discrete functional units rather than visual features or integral parts of the radicals/characters in which they are embedded. We discuss the theoretical implications of this conclusion for models of Chinese word identification.

Chinese characters, Chinese reading, Eye movements, Strokes
1939-1285
544-551
Yu, Lili
041dcf79-9499-49f3-814e-61280835eff1
Xiong, Jianping
2fd378d2-1d7c-4f8e-bc5c-ea953a80eb94
Zhang, Qiaoming
cefdeedd-eb97-4c8a-8297-990b849316a4
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Reichle, Erik D.
44dc4e6a-e5e2-47c5-9a09-2ef759db0583
Yu, Lili
041dcf79-9499-49f3-814e-61280835eff1
Xiong, Jianping
2fd378d2-1d7c-4f8e-bc5c-ea953a80eb94
Zhang, Qiaoming
cefdeedd-eb97-4c8a-8297-990b849316a4
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Reichle, Erik D.
44dc4e6a-e5e2-47c5-9a09-2ef759db0583

Yu, Lili, Xiong, Jianping, Zhang, Qiaoming, Drieghe, Denis and Reichle, Erik D. (2019) Eye-movement evidence for the mental representation of strokes in Chinese characters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45 (3), 544-551. (doi:10.1037/xlm0000598).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Although strokes are the smallest identifiable units in Chinese words, the fact that they are often embedded within larger units (i.e., radicals and/or characters that comprise Chinese words) raises questions about how and even if strokes are separately represented in lexical memory. The present experiment examined these questions using a gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to manipulate the parafoveal preview of the first of two-character target words. Relative to a normal preview, the removal of whole strokes was more disruptive (i.e., resulting in longer looking times on targets) than the removal of an equivalent amount of visual information (i.e., number of pixels) from strokes located either in similar locations or throughout the entire character. These findings suggest that strokes are represented as discrete functional units rather than visual features or integral parts of the radicals/characters in which they are embedded. We discuss the theoretical implications of this conclusion for models of Chinese word identification.

Text
Yu, Xiong, Zhang, Drieghe & Reichle (in press) - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 28 February 2018
Published date: 1 March 2019
Keywords: Chinese characters, Chinese reading, Eye movements, Strokes

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 418480
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/418480
ISSN: 1939-1285
PURE UUID: e1a61b2c-a7dd-445e-ba28-9fa7c7a73e92
ORCID for Denis Drieghe: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9630-8410

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 09 Mar 2018 17:30
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:14

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Contributors

Author: Lili Yu
Author: Jianping Xiong
Author: Qiaoming Zhang
Author: Denis Drieghe ORCID iD
Author: Erik D. Reichle

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