Abstract
Prior studies indicate that the semantic radical in Chinese characters contains category information that can support the independent retrieval of category information through the lexical network to the conceptual network. Inductive reasoning relies on category information; thus, semantic radicals may influence inductive reasoning. As most natural concepts are hierarchically structured in the human brain, this study examined how semantic radicals impact inductive reasoning for hierarchical concepts. The study used animal and plant nouns, organized in basic, superordinate, and subordinate levels; half had a semantic radical and half did not. Eighteen participants completed an inductive reasoning task. Behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) data were collected. The behavioural results showed that participants reacted faster and more accurately in the with-semantic-radical condition than in the without-semantic-radical condition. For the ERPs, differences between the conditions were found, and these differences lasted from the very early cognitive processing stage (i.e., the N1 time window) to the relatively late processing stages (i.e., the N400 and LPC time windows). Semantic radicals can help to distinguish the hierarchies earlier (in the N400 period) than characters without a semantic radical (in the LPC period). These results provide electrophysiological evidence that semantic radicals may improve sensitivity to distinguish between hierarchical concepts.
Highlights
A multitude of studies examining the relationship between language and thought has concluded that language can affect thought, as advocated by the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, from several perspectives, especially in terms of the temporal world[2,3] spatial world[4,5], colour terms[6,7], and even the category labels of a given language[8]
Characters have a pictophonetic structure, 71% of which have pictophonetic characters that conform to the rule that the semantic radical provides category information, and the phonetic radical provides pronunciation information
The greater N400 elicited by a Chinese character with a high-frequency radical can be interpreted in terms of impeded processing due to inhibition from a greater radical-neighbourhood[28]
Summary
A multitude of studies examining the relationship between language and thought (see[1] for more summative details) has concluded that language can affect thought, as advocated by the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, from several perspectives, especially in terms of the temporal world[2,3] spatial world[4,5], colour terms[6,7], and even the category labels of a given language[8]. Research into natural category recognition has found that language affects classification processing Both Mandarin Chinese and English can provide explicit labels that denote category membership. In studies of English-speaking children, an explicit cue like oak tree can facilitate children’s learning of nouns and their categories better than cues without explicit category information, such as oak[16] Words containing such labels are relatively rare in English, but they are highly prevalent in Mandarin Chinese[17,18]. The semantic radical “ ” labels metal objects This semantic radical applies to category members at both the subordinate and the basic levels, which clearly indexes category membership. The retrieval of category information from semantic radicals is closely related to the processing of Chinese characters. A larger N400 is found when processing pictophonetic characters, suggesting that more cognitive resources are needed when processing pictophonetic characters than when processing single characters
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