Processing Of Chinese Words Research Articles

Expectation Modulates Repetition Suppression at Late But Not Early Stages during Visual Word Recognition: Evidence from Event-related Potentials.

Visual word recognition is commonly rapid and efficient, incorporating top-down predictive processing mechanisms. Neuroimaging studies with face stimuli suggest that repetition suppression (RS) reflects predictive processing at the neural level, as this effect is larger when repetitions are more frequent, that is, more expected. It remains unclear, however, at the temporal level whether and how RS and its modulation by expectation occur in visual word recognition. To address this gap, the present study aimed to investigate the presence and time course of these effects during visual word recognition using EEG. Thirty-six native Cantonese speakers were presented with pairs of Chinese written words and performed a nonlinguistic oddball task. The second word of a pair was either a repetition of the first or a different word (alternation). In repetition blocks, 75% of trials were repetitions and 25% were alternations, whereas the reverse was true in alternation blocks. Topographic analysis of variance of EEG at each time point showed robust RS effects in three time windows (141-227 msec, 242-445 msec, and 467-513 msec) reflecting facilitation of visual word recognition. Importantly, the modulation of RS by expectation was observed at the late rather than early intervals (334-387 msec, 465-550 msec, and 559-632 msec) and more than 100msec after the first RS effects. In the predictive coding view of RS, only late repetition effects are modulated by expectation, whereas early RS effects may be mediated by lower-level predictions. Taken together, our findings provide the first EEG evidence revealing distinct temporal dynamics of RS effects and repetition probability on RS effects in visual processing of Chinese words.

Emotion in language: Emotion word type and valence interactively predicted Chinese emotional word processing in emotion categorization task

AbstractThe present study examined the predicted effects of emotion word type and valence on emotional word recognition and explored their influence on emotion effects through an emotion categorization task. The results showed the influence of emotion word type and valence on emotional words recognition. Emotion‐label words exhibited faster response and higher accuracy rates (ACC) than emotion‐laden words, and positive words evoked faster response and lower ACC than negative words. Positive emotion‐label words and negative emotion‐laden words evoked higher ACC than negative emotion‐label words and positive emotion‐laden words. Besides, the findings revealed the modulation of emotion word type and valence on the emotion effects. Emotion‐label words and positive words displayed larger emotion effects than emotion‐laden words and negative words in reaction time, and only emotion‐laden words and positive emotion‐label words showed emotion effects in ACC. These findings endorsed the mediated emotion concept account, density hypothesis, and automatic vigilance hypothesis. Based on the findings, we proposed a valence cognition account to explain the interactive results.

Competition between parts and whole: A new approach to Chinese compound word processing.

How compound words are processed remains a central question in research on Chinese reading. The Chinese reading model assumes that all possible words sharing characters are activated during word processing and these activated words compete for a winner (Li & Pollatsek, 2020). The present studies aimed to examine whether embedded component words compete with whole compound words in Chinese reading. In Study 1, we analyzed two existing lexical decision databases and revealed inhibitory effects of component-word frequency and facilitative effects of character frequency on the first components. In Study 2, we conducted two factorial experiments to further examine the effects of first component-word frequency, with character frequencies controlled. The results consistently indicated significant inhibitory effects of component-word frequency. Collectively, these findings support the theoretical proposition that both component words and compound words are activated and engage in competition during word processing. This provides a new approach to compound word processing in Chinese reading and a possible solution to mixed results of character frequency effects reported in the literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Processing of emotional connotations in Chinese monomorphic and compound words reflected by the early posterior negativity.

Writing stands as one of humanity's most profound inventions, facilitating the efficient sharing and transmission of vast amounts of information. Similar to images and facial expressions, visual (written) words possess the ability to evoke emotional connotations. Understanding how the brain perceives these emotional nuances encoded in highly symbolic visual words is a key focus of the emerging field of "affective neurolinguistics." At the core of this inquiry lies the examination of the early posterior negativity (EPN), an event-related potentials (ERPs) component peaking around 300 ms after stimulus onset in the occipitotemporal scalp region. EPN has consistently emerged in response to emotional stimuli, encompassing pictures, faces, and visual words. However, prior research has notably lacked observation of EPN in response to Chinese emotional words, raising questions about potential differences in emotional processing between Chinese and other languages. Given the logographic nature of the Chinese writing system and the prevalence of compound words in the Chinese lexicon, this study aims to explore whether the emotional processing of Chinese monomorphic and compound words elicits an EPN response. Two experiments were conducted: Experiment 1 utilized one-character words (monomorphic words), while Experiment 2 employed two-character words (compound words). Participants were assigned a go/no-go task, instructed to respond to unknown words (word recognition task) or blue stimuli (color decision task). Data analysis using a data-driven mass univariate approach revealed significant ERP differences between emotional and neutral words. Notably, the time course, scalp topography, and cortical generators of the difference ERP presented a characteristic EPN response in both experiments. These findings strongly support the notion that the processing of emotional connotations in both Chinese monomorphic and compound words is reflected by the EPN, paving the way for future research using EPN as an emotion-related ERP component for investigating emotional processing of Chinese words.

Language Experience Modulates the Visual N200 Response for Disyllabic Chinese Words: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Prior event-related potential (ERP) research on how the brain processes non-alphabetic scripts like Chinese has identified an N200 component related to early visual processing of Chinese disyllabic words. An enhanced N200 response was observed when similar prime-target pairs were presented, but it was not elicited when native Chinese speakers read Korean Hangul, a script resembling Chinese characters. This led to the proposal that N200 was not a universal marker for orthographic processing but rather specific and unique to Chinese. However, there was uncertainty due to the absence of Korean participants in the previous research. The impact of language experience on N200 remains unclear. To address this, the present pilot ERP study included three adult groups (totaling 30 participants) with varying language proficiency levels. The participants judged if randomly presented words were Chinese or Korean, while the ERP responses were recorded. The behavioral data showed high accuracy across the groups. The reaction times differed between the groups with the native speakers responding faster. The N200 patterns varied across the groups. Both Chinese native speakers and Chinese-as-second-language learners showed stronger N200 responses for Chinese words compared to Korean words regardless of whether an adaptive or a fixed-time window was used for the N200 quantification, but this was not the case for Korean native speakers. Our cross-linguistic study suggests that N200 is not exclusive to Chinese orthography. Instead, it reflects general visual processing sensitive to both orthographic features and learning experience.

Age of acquisition effects in Chinese two-character compound words: a megastudy of eye movements during reading.

Words learned earlier in life are processed faster than words learned later in life. In Chinese, the age of acquisition (AoA) effect has been extensively studied in one-character words, yet no studies have explored this effect in compound words. Given that compound words are a widespread word type and are processed differently than one-character words, it is unclear how AoA affects compound word processing. The present study examined the role of multiple variables in the processing of Chinese two-character compound words based on a database of eye-movement measures. We focused on the AoA effect from the whole compound word and the first and second characters. We found that whole-word AoA and first-character AoA have an early and long-lasting influence, with no AoA effect from the second character. The results indicated that two-character compound words are accessed via the character and whole word simultaneously. These findings are discussed with respect to theories of the AoA effect.

Visual event-related potentials reveal the early whole-word lexical processing of Chinese two-character words

Morphologically complex words are common across different languages, especially in Chinese, because more than 90% of common modern Chinese words are complex words. Many behavioral studies have suggested the whole-word processing of Chinese complex words, but the neural correlates of whole-word processing remain unclear. Previous electrophysiological studies revealed automatic and early (∼250 ms) access to the orthographic forms of monomorphic words in the ventral occipitotemporal area. In this study, we investigated whether there is also automatic and early orthographic recognition of Chinese complex words (as whole units) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). A total of 150 two-character words and 150 two-character pseudowords composed of the same 300 characters (morphemes) were pseudorandomly presented to proficient Chinese readers. Participants were required to determine the color of each stimulus in the color decision task and to determine whether each stimulus was a word in the lexical decision task. The two constituent characters of each stimulus were horizontally arranged in Experiment 1 and vertically arranged in Experiment 2. The results revealed a significant early ERP difference between words and pseudowords approximately 250–300 ms after stimulus onset in the parieto-occipital scalp region. The early ERP difference was more prominent in the color decision task than in the lexical decision task, more prominent in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2, and more prominent in the left parieto-occipital scalp region than in the right. Source analysis results showed that the early ERP difference originated from the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These results reflected early and automatic access to whole-word orthographic representations of Chinese complex words in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex.

The role of selective attention in Chinese emotional word processing: evidence from event-related potentials.

This study seeks to explore the interaction between ignored valence and attended valence in the processing of Chinese emotion words. The experimental materials utilized in this study consisted of Chinese emotion words. Participants were instructed to observe the words and press a key when presented with target words. Additionally, the electroencephalographic responses of the participants were recorded during the experiment. The results showed that emotional nontarget words elicited greater amplitude of the N170 in the attend-emotion words block compared to the attend-neutral words block. Negative nontarget words produce greater amplitude of the late posterior positivity compared to positive nontarget words. In addition, emotional nontarget words were influenced by both ignored and attended valence, whereby positive nontarget words resulted in larger amplitude of the N170 component in the attend-negative block compared to the attend-neutral block. The modulation pattern for negative nontarget words was evident on the left hemisphere. The findings suggest that emotional nontarget words received greater attentional resources in the attend-emotion words block during the early stages of processing, compared to the attend-neutral word block. Additionally, during the later stages of processing, negative nontarget words were more likely to be processed than positive nontarget words. Overall, these results provide support for the evaluation space model.

Full-form vs. combinatorial processing of Chinese compound words: Evidence from mismatch negativity

This study examined whether Chinese spoken compound words are processed via full-form access or combination through morphemes by recording mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN has been shown to be larger for linguistic units that involves full-form access (lexical MMN enhancement) and smaller for separate but combinable units (combinatorial MMN reduction). Chinse compound words were compared against pseudocompounds, which do not have full-form representations in the long-term memory and are “illegal” combinations. All stimuli were disyllabic (bimorphemic). Word frequency was manipulated with the prediction that low-frequency compounds are more likely processed combinatorially, while high-frequency ones are more likely accessed in full forms. The results showed that low-frequency words elicited smaller MMNs than pseudocompounds, which supported the prediction of combinatorial processing. However, neither MMN enhancement nor reduction was found for high-frequency words. These results were interpreted within the dual-route model framework that assumes simultaneous access to words and morphemes.

Early lexical processing of Chinese one-character words and Mongolian words: A comparative study using event-related potentials.

Logographic language and alphabetic language differ significantly in orthography. Investigating the commonality and particularity of visual word recognition between the two distinct writing systems is informative for understating the neural mechanisms underlying visual word recognition. In the present study, we compared the chronometry of early lexical processing and the brain regions involved in early lexical processing between Chinese (logographic language) and Mongolian (alphabetic language) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) using both implicit and explicit reading tasks. Familiar Chinese one-character words (lexical) and unknown Chinese one-character words (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Chinese readers in Experiment 1. Mongolian words (lexical) and pseudowords (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Mongolian readers in Experiment 2. In the color decision task, participants were asked to decide the color (black or blue) of each stimulus. In the lexical recognition task, participants were asked to report whether they could recognize each stimulus. The results showed that in both experiments and both tasks, ERPs to lexical items differed significantly from those to non-lexical items in the parietooccipital scalp region approximately 250 ms after stimulus onset, reflecting the early lexical processing, which likely originated from the ventral occipitotemporal cortex as revealed by source analysis. These results indicated that although Chinese and Mongolian differed markedly in orthographic features, the neural mechanisms underlying early lexical processing are similar between the two languages.

Familiarity ratings for 24,325 simplified Chinese words.

The present work collected familiarity norms for 20,275 two-character, 1231 three-character, and 2819 four-character simplified Chinese words from 1300 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The familiarity of each word was rated on a 7-point scale by at least 21 participants. The results supported the reliability and validity of the present familiarity ratings, which is the first large familiarity database for Chinese in the field. These familiarity norms can be downloaded from the supplemental materials. Furthermore, the contribution of familiarity to Chinese lexical processing was investigated using the present familiarity ratings and previous data (lexical features and visual lexical decision), mainly from two major Chinese lexicon projects, MELD-SCH and CLP. Regression analysis suggests that familiarity explained a substantial percentage of the variance in lexical processing of both simplified and traditional Chinese words, over and above the effects of word frequency and other lexical features, including age of acquisition (AoA). Further analysis identified a significantly greater familiarity effect for lower-frequency words than that for higher-frequency words. Together, among the first, our findings support the important contribution of familiarity with Chinese words to lexical processing, especially for low-frequency words.

Semantic Transparency in Chinese Compound Word Processing: Evidence from Mismatch Negativity

This study examined how semantic transparency modulated the processing of spoken Chinese compound words with event-related potential (ERP) recording. A reverse-block passive oddball paradigm was adopted to elicit mismatch negativity (MMN), which responds to holistic and combinatorial processing in opposite directions. Specifically, linguistic inputs that are processed as holistic lexical representations will elicit stronger MMNs (lexical enhancement) than those that do not have such representations. In contrast, when they are processed by combining the constituents, smaller MMNs will be elicited (combinatorial reduction) as compared to non-combinable inputs. We compared the strengths of MMNs among transparent words, opaque words, and pseudocompounds (that did not have lexical representations and were non-combinable). It was shown that transparent words triggered smaller MMNs than pseudocompounds, which supported combinatorial processing. Opaque words did not differ from pseudocompounds, which was interpreted as parallel employment of the holistic and combinatorial processing routes. Overall, the results are consistent with the idea that native Chinese speakers routinely attempt to process Chinese compound words by retrieving and combining morphemes. However, because the meanings of opaque words are irrelevant to their constituent morphemes, Chinese speakers must construct and retrieve their holistic representations to ensure accurate processing.

The Representations of Chinese Characters: Evidence from Sublexical Components.

Little research has been done about the neural substrate of the sublexical level of Chinese word recognition. In particular, it is unclear how radicals participate in Chinese word processing. We compared two measures of radical combinability, position-general radical combinability (GRC) and position-specific radical combinability (SRC) depending on whether the position of the radical is taken into account. We selected characters with embedded target radicals that had different GRC and SRC measures. These measures were used as predictors in a parametric modulation analysis and a multivariate representational similarity analysis. Human participants with native Mandarin speakers (17 males and 24 females) were asked to read words in search of animal words. Results showed that SRC is a better predictor than GRC in decoding the neural patterns. Whole-brain analysis indicated that SRC is encoded bilaterally in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, pars opercularis, and pars triangularis), the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and a region on the border of the superior parietal lobule and the inferior parietal lobule (SPL/IPL). Region-of-interest-based RSA confirmed the results of the whole-brain analysis. Furthermore, we observed a correlation of another sublexical variable, logographeme composition, with bilateral activity in SPL. Logographemes refer to the basic stroke combinations that form radicals and characters. Finally, we observed involvement of bilateral cerebellum activity in Chinese word recognition. Our findings confirm the importance of sublexical components (SRC and logographeme composition) in Chinese word recognition and also confirm that Chinese word recognition involves more bilateral processing than word recognition in alphabetical languages.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Chinese is a logographic language. However, characters contain informative subword components (radicals, logographemes, and strokes). We investigated whether the position of the radical is important. We presented carefully selected words and looked where brain activity correlated with subword information. Results indicate that position-dependent radicals predict brain encoding in a network of regions associated with Chinese word recognition, including higher order regions such as bilateral IFG, MFG, and SPL/IPL. Logographeme composition had an effect as well. Our findings provide strong evidence (1) for the importance of position-specific radical information and logographemes in Chinese word recognition, (2) that current brain imaging techniques are best suited to study these, and (3) that confirms the interactive nature of Chinese character recognition.

Electrophysiological correlates of character transposition in two-character Chinese word identification

The present study investigated brain activity elicited by character transposition processing of two-character Chinese words using event-related potentials (ERPs) with a two-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. The behavioral results showed higher accuracy with canonical and transposed words than pseudowords in the short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, 249 ms) condition, but not in the long SOA (581 ms) condition. Additionally, relative to the pseudoword condition, the ERP results indicated that the canonical and transposed words elicited statistically less negative N250 and N400 amplitudes. Furthermore, both the canonical and transposed words revealed no significant differences in the early N100, P200, and N250 components, whereas a significant difference was observed in the N400 amplitude regardless of the SOAs between the two constituent characters, indicating less semantic activation. Taken together, our electrophysiological data indicate that early ERP components are not sensitive to Chinese character transposition. In contrast, such morpheme transposition affects the semantic processing of Chinese compound words.

Evidence for neural re-use hypothesis from the processing of Chinese emotional words

<p id="p00005">The two main theoretical views of emotional word processing are conflicting. According to standard psycholinguistics, emotions are elicited within the reading network itself after semantic activation. However, neural reuse theories suggest that emotional words can be directly processed by the brain region that is activated in emotional information processing, similar to how emotional images, smell, and faces are processed. This means that emotional effects to words occur before semantics, which benefits human adaptability. The processing of emotional words in phonetic characters supports the view of neural reuse, but the processing of emotional words in ideographic texts has no evidence. An event-related potential experiment and a behavioral experiment were conducted to explore the processing of emotional information while reading at an implicit level. <p id="p00010">A total of 262 Chinese words were selected from the Chinese Affective Stimulus System. Among these words, 128 were disgust-related words, 100 were neutral words, and 34 were transportation-related words. We then selected 35 neutral words, 35 disgust-related words, and 24 transportation-related words that were matched on the basis of valence and arousal. Twenty Chinese college students (10 female) participated in the EEG experiment. They were asked to press the response button using their right index finger when the words they read were related to transportation (Go trials). Otherwise, they should not respond (No-go trials). Another 30 healthy individuals (15 female) participated in the behavioral experiment. However, they were asked to silently read the presented words and press the response button using their right index finger only when a given word was not related to transportation (Go trials). Otherwise, they should not respond (No-go trials). <p id="p00015">The EEG experiment showed that differences between disgust and neutral words appeared as early as 170 ms after the onset of stimulus. No significant effect of emotion was found on P100 (the early ERP component). However, a significant main effect of emotion was found for the early posterior negativity (EPN). Disgust-related words evoked a larger right EPN than neutral words did. A negative going wave reflecting the processing of meaning was found at approximately 400 ms, and source localization indicated a cortical generator of emotion effect near the left anterior insula. The inhibition response to disgust-related words generated greater late positive component than the response to neutral words. Specifically, disgust-related words evoked a much larger P600 amplitude compared with neutral words. Behavioral experiment results showed a significant difference between the reaction time to disgust-related words and neutral words. Participants responded faster to disgust-related words than to neutral words. <p id="p00020">Results indicate that negative emotional words have an advantage in processing over neutral words. Emotional response to negative emotional words occurs before the processing of their semantics. The processing of negative emotional words supports theory of neural reuse. This finding shows that the nervous system is highly flexible and can process information in an appropriate manner according to the needs in an actual situation. Moreover, when processing emotional information, ideographic Chinese emotional words start earlier and activate a wider range of brain regions than phonetic Western emotional words.

Chinese Emotional Two-character Word Processing in Sentence Reading

Compared to the processing of the words alone, the processing of Chinese two-character words in sentences will be closer to a natural scenario, and the understanding of the sentence will be influenced by both linguistic contexts and the non-linguistic contexts. This study, in a moving-window self-paced word-by-word sentence reading task, experimentally explored the processing of Chinese sentences with emotional two-character words using reversible words and reaction time as materials and index respectively. The experimental results showed that emotional words may facilitate the processing of its following two words; there might exist subsequent processing in the third word behind the emotional word; there might exist lexical access and whole-word access, processing of morpheme positioned information in the processing of Chinese two-character words in sentence reading; the processing of Chinese two-character words may be similar with that of word alone. This study expands the research of Chinese emotional two-character words processing.

Age of acquisition ratings for 19,716 simplified Chinese words.

This study collected age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 19,716 simplified Chinese words provided by 1765 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Analysis of demographic factors revealed both gender and cohort differences in ratings and thus differences in trajectory of vocabulary development, suggesting the utility of AoA ratings to investigate individual differences and societal changes in levels of academic achievement. Moreover, consistent with past analysis conducted with English words, AoA ratings accounted for an extra portion of variance in lexical processing above and beyond the most prominent predictor, word frequency. Further analysis suggested that AoA ratings might be more predictive of processing low frequency words relative to high frequency words. Cross-language comparison also indicated that future research should explore the unique factors implicated in the processing of Chinese words.

Inter-character Orthographic Similarity Effects on the Recognition of Chinese Coordinative Compound Words.

Chinese coordinative compound words are common and unique in inter-character semantic and orthographic relationships. This study explored the inter-character orthographic similarity effects on the recognition of transparent two-morpheme coordinative compound words. Seventy-two native Chinese readers participated in a lexical decision task. The findings demonstrated robust inhibitory inter-character orthographic similarity effects, intra-word character reversal effects, and inter-character semantic similarity effects. These results were compared to those of previous studies on coordinative compound word recognition and on the orthographic similarity phenomenon at both character and word levels. The findings were explained with the multi-level representational model of morphological processing of Chinese compound words (Zhou and Marslen-Wilson in Psychologia 43:47-66, 2000). The model was further extended by adding the activation of morpho-orthographic relationships and the mapping of morphemic orthographic information onto the semantic information of both morphemes and whole words.

The Significance of Neuroscience for Teaching English as Second Language (TESL) in the Digital Era

In formal TESL courses, Phonetics, Linguistics, Grammar as well as Psychology are taught. However, Neuroscience, the study of the brain, is necessary for ESL teachers for future professional development to meet the rapidly changing needs of the students at all levels in the digital era. Designing educational practices without knowledge of the brain is like “an automobile designer without a full understanding of engines” (Hart, 1999). Based on the neurological evidence of processing of English and Chinese words in the bilinguals’ brain, Sham (2002) found a new Dual Coding (Paivio, 1986) model for designing CSL teaching materials that best fits young learners’ limited capacity of the brain by reducing their cognitive load (Sweller et al., 1998). Although little research linking neuroscience and learning, Guy and Byrn (2013) emphasis on the understanding of neuroscience of working memory has positive effects on motivating students learning. Direct implication of neuroscience by language teachers has been found difficult, but interdisciplinary study of neuroscience, psychology and education is fruitful (Coch et al., 2007) and there has a great impact of neuroscience on teaching and learning including its implication for ESL college classroom (Sousa, 2010). This paper reviews current research of neuroscience, psychology integrating with ESL teaching and learning, and provides the adult students’ feedback of learning IELTS through the design related to neuropsychological findings in order to demonstrate how significant neuroscience is on TESL. In other words, understanding of neuroscience facilitates ESL teaching and benefits ESL teachers’ professional development in future (247 words).

Event-related potentials during Chinese single-character and two-character word reading in children

Word reading involves a series of cognitive processes, from lower-level visual processing to word semantic retrieval. To investigate the timing of the underlying neurocognitive processes in reading, the current study examined the electrophysiological correlates of cognitive functions associated with traditional Chinese word reading in Hong Kong children (Age: M = 8.19, SD = 0.82 years old) using event-related potentials (ERPs). A single-character lexical decision task and a two-character word lexical decision task were used to explore different levels of Chinese word processing. One-hundred ten children’s data were analyzed. Results revealed that radical level processing was related to a P1 component at as early as 130 ms. Character-level processing was related to an N1 component from 218 ms onwards. Two-character word semantic processing was related to an N400-like component at as early as 450 ms. The results show a similar time course of visual word processing as previously reported in alphabetic languages, consistent with increasing specialization in the ventral visual stream for increasing wordlikeness leading to processing of linguistic aspects in higher-level language regions.