Abstract
Character order information is encoded at the initial stage of Chinese word processing, however, its time course remains underspecified. In this study, we assess the exact time course of the character decomposition and transposition processes of two-character Chinese compound words (canonical, transposed, or reversible words) compared with pseudowords using dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of stimuli appearing at 30 ms per character with no inter-stimulus interval. The results indicate that Chinese readers can identify words with character transpositions in rapid succession; however, a transposition cost is involved in identifying transposed words compared to canonical words. In RSVP reading, character order of words is more likely to be reversed during the period from 30 to 180 ms for canonical and reversible words, but the period from 30 to 240 ms for transposed words. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that the holistic representation of the base word is activated, however, the order of the two constituent characters is not strictly processed during the very early stage of visual word processing.
Highlights
Visual word identification is a basic process in reading that requires readers to assess the identity and position of the letters in a word (Inhoff, 1990; Besner and Humphreys, 1991; Davis, 2010)
The character order errors in Chinese compound words mainly occurred during the initial stage of visual word processing (30–180 ms for canonical and reversible words, 30–240 ms for transposed words)
The first question addressed here is that the character decomposition and transposition processes of compound words have an impact on visual word recognition in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) reading
Summary
Visual word identification is a basic process in reading that requires readers to assess the identity and position of the letters in a word (Inhoff, 1990; Besner and Humphreys, 1991; Davis, 2010). Skilled readers can understand text with letter transpositions in an alphabetic writing system (Davis, 2003). Using the boundary paradigm, Angele and Rayner (2013) examined morpheme order transposition in reading English compound words, they found that the readers could obtain preview benefit from both normal and reversed words. Analogous to English, character order information is important during Chinese reading. Bai et al (2011) explored the time course of compound word processing in Chinese during a lexical decision task.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
