The characteristics of event related potential in the cognitive course of individual Chinese characters

Abstract

The difference between the Chinese and English character recognition process and the characteristics of Chinese character recognition process are investigated by analyzing the ERP difference between the matched and mismatched ending strokes of a single Chinese character. First, the P300 are observed in the mismatched ERP waveforms, which don't exist in the matched ERP waveforms (P<0.05). These phenomena demonstrate that the recognition of the pictograph Chinese characters are not only affected by the semanteme, but also closely related to its image of the figure. Secondly, the amplitude of the N400 in the mismatched ending strokes of Chinese character is obviously higher than that in the matched groups (P<0.05). The N400 is distributed in the other areas except the right side of temporal lobe and is higher in the left side. However, the amplitude of N400 in the waveforms has no obvious distinction between the cerebral hemispheres, where the amplitude of N400 are obtained by distracting the ERP of the mismatched individual Chinese character by the ERP of the matched group. These results show that the difference between cerebral hemispheres is attributed to the formal and phonic processing, not due to the semantic processing, which verify that the left and right cerebral hemisphere are both used in the Chinese character recognition, which is very different from the English character recognition, where the left side cerebral hemisphere is used with high percentage.