Word-superiority effect as a function of semantic transparency of Chinese bimorphemic compound words

Abstract

The word-superiority effect (WSE) describes the superior recognition of word constituents in a word, as opposed to a non-word, context. In this study, the WSE was used as a diagnostic tool to examine the modulatory effect of word semantic transparency on the degree to which Chinese bimorphemic compound words are lexically represented as unitised wholes. Word semantic transparency refers to the degree to which word constituents are semantically transparent/opaque to whole-word meaning. A modified Reicher–Wheeler paradigm and a character identification task were employed. Compounds with at least one opaque constituent (fully and partially opaque) patterned together and displayed a larger WSE (more word-like) than fully transparent compounds. A space occurs naturally between constituents of Chinese compounds. Present results corroborated with recent results on English compound processing in which a space was artificially inserted between constituents of naturally concatenated compounds. Independently, the WSE was larger for high-frequency than low-frequency Chinese compounds.