N170 reflects visual familiarity and automatic sublexical phonological access in L2 written word processing

Yen Na Yum,Sam-Po Law

doi:10.1017/s1366728920000759

Abstract

AbstractThe literature has mixed reports on whether the N170, an early visual ERP response to words, signifies orthographic and/or phonological processing, and whether these effects are moderated by script and language expertise. In this study, native Chinese readers, Japanese–Chinese, and Korean–Chinese bilingual readers performed a one-back repetition detection task with single Chinese characters that differed in phonological regularity status. Results using linear mixed effects models showed that Korean–Chinese readers had bilateral N170 response, while native Chinese and Japanese–Chinese groups had left-lateralized N170, with stronger left lateralization in native Chinese than Japanese–Chinese readers. Additionally, across groups, irregular characters had bilateral increase in N170 amplitudes compared to regular characters. These results suggested that visual familiarity to a script rather than orthography-phonology mapping determined the left lateralization of the N170 response, while there was automatic access to sublexical phonology in the N170 time window in native and non-native readers alike.

Highlights

In event-related potential (ERP) studies of orthographic processing, the N170 component – usually found to peak between 160–200 ms post-stimulus onset and having a typical distribution of occipital-temporal negativity coupled with frontal-central positivity – is a robust index of one’s sensitivity to print
While early findings of the reading-related N170 focused on alphabetic scripts, subsequent investigations reported the component in other writing systems, including non-alphabetic languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (Xue, Jiang, Chen & Dong, 2008; Zhao et al, 2012)
With regards to the mechanisms of single word visual processing and how properties of the native language writing systems would moderate these processes in a non-native script

Summary

Introduction

In event-related potential (ERP) studies of orthographic processing, the N170 component – usually found to peak between 160–200 ms post-stimulus onset and having a typical distribution of occipital-temporal negativity coupled with frontal-central positivity – is a robust index of one’s sensitivity to print (see Maurer & McCandliss, 2007 for review). The great majority, if not all, of these reports were based on content-irrelevant tasks such as color-matching (Cao et al, 2011; Lin et al, 2011; Xue et al, 2019; Zhao et al, 2012), size judgment (Lu et al, 2011), and repetition detection (Maurer et al, 2008; Qin, Maurits & Maassen, 2016). Taken together, these results suggested that the N170 effect can be found across

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Conclusion