Orthographic and semantic radical effects of picture-word naming in Chinese

Abstract

Previous Chinese picture-word interference studies have shown robust orthographic effects; however, no study has yet established its loci. Weekes et al. (2002) found no interaction between orthography and phonology. Hence we speculated that orthographic effects occur between orthography and semantics via the semantic pathway. Mappings between orthography and meaning were manipulated by three levels; orthographic, opaque and transparent distractors, varying the extent that meaning was represented in relation to the shared semantic radical of the target. The results showed the greatest naming facilitation when distractor words were orthographically similar to the depicted target compared to unrelated distractors. Although slower than orthographic distractors, distractors with opaque semantic mappings also showed facilitation, proceeded by transparent semantic distractors. The observation that orthographic and semantic factors interact suggests that orthographic facilitation and semantic interference are based on a lexical–semantic conflict co-located at the lemma level via the semantic route (Roelofs, 1992; Schriefers et al., 1990).