From Form to Meaning: The Effects of Chinese Characters’ Iconicity on Children’s Perceptual and Semantic Processing Across 3.5 to 6.5 Years

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ABSTRACT Research Findings: While Pictographic characters are often used to support Chinese children’s character learning, little is known about how this facilitates learning. Following the integrated model of symbol semantic categorization, this study examined the effects of Chinese characters’ iconicity on perceptual similarity and semantic consistency judgments among children aged 3.5–6.5 (N = 126, 64 boys). Results showed that perceptual similarity was highest for characters of Dongba script (DBS), followed by characters of Oracle bone script (OBS), and lowest for characters of simplified Chinese (SC). Semantic consistency accuracy was highest for DBS. Meanwhile, children under 58.57 months showed similar accuracy of OBS and SC, while older children performed better with SC. Semantic consistency speed was comparable across all character types for children under 55 months but faster for DBS and SC in older children. These findings suggest that higher iconicity facilitates perceptual similarity and semantic judgments, making characters of SC easier to judge as children age. Practices and Policy: These results indicate that Chinese characters with high iconicity can scaffold young children’s character learning. Educators should introduce characters with varying levels of iconicity based on children’s ages, starting with highly iconic characters and gradually transitioning to less iconic ones.