Abstract
Orthographic regularity is important for processing Chinese characters. However, the issues how orthographic regularity influences the visual recognition of real Chinese characters and whether common processes related to the potential effect exist between successive (SUCC) and concurrent (CONC) conditions with asynchronous presentation of S1 and S2 are still unclear. In the current study, event-related potential (ERP) technique was adopted to investigate electrophysiological correlates of the orthographic regularity effect. Behaviorally, we found fewer errors and shorter response times for SUCC and CONC conditions compared to simultaneous (SIM) condition with synchronous presentation and disappearance of S1 and S2, which demonstrates similarities between SUCC and CONC and their differences from SIM. We found bilaterally smaller N170 responses for real Chinese characters preceded by false characters compared to real characters, demonstrating that orthographic regularity may inhibit the recognition of real Chinese characters. Additionally, the inhibition effect was present in SUCC and CONC rather than SIM, which shows that smaller N170 responses may have been due to asynchronous presentations of S1 and S2 and common inhibition processes in the SUCC and CONC conditions.
Highlights
Orthographic regularity is important for processing Chinese characters
The current study measured N170 responses to examine how orthographic regularity affects the processing of real Chinese characters and whether common processes related to the potential effect exist between SUCC and CONC
We examined how orthographic regularity influences the processing of real Chinese characters and whether common processes related to the potential effect exist between SUCC and CONC conditions
Summary
Orthographic regularity is important for processing Chinese characters. the issues how orthographic regularity influences the visual recognition of real Chinese characters and whether common processes related to the potential effect exist between successive (SUCC) and concurrent (CONC) conditions with asynchronous presentation of S1 and S2 are still unclear. A previous event-related potential (ERP) study found that real Chinese characters and pseudo-characters only elicited larger N170 responses than false characters in the left hemisphere, suggesting that real and false characters seem to be processed as different categories in the left posterior area[6]. Su et al (2012) recently used a masked priming paradigm and ERP technique to identify a priming effect due to graphical similarity and its corresponding time course. This effect was reflected by smaller P1 and N400 for target characters when positions of their radicals were the same as those of primes. They used radicals with subordinate and dominant positions to find a priming effect of radical position preference as reflected by stronger N170 and P200 for targets with radicals in their subordinate (non-preferred) positions[10]
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