Identifying visual-orthographical markers of reading expertise in Chinese : correlating behavioral and event-related potential measures

Abstract

The recognition of Chinese characters has been previously suggested to share a lot of similarities with picture recognition during visual-orthographic processing. Specifically, it has been argued that children recognize pictures and Chinese characters using a visual-spatial and holistic approach, and that visual-orthographic skills have been suggested to play a crucial role during the early years of literacy. Using event-related potential (ERP) techniques, this study recorded the electrophysiological responses of 41 children aged 9 to 10 as they passively viewed characters and line-drawings of different well-formedness, including real, pseudo and non, in a repetition detection paradigm. The ERP responses were then correlated with their reading abilities measured by standardized language assessment. It was found that as early as the visual P100 component, children began to delineate characters and pictures and the differentiation continued to the lexical-semantic retrieval stage of the N400 component. Sensitivity to well-formedness in pictures was revealed at N170 component whereas that to well-formedness in characters was distinguished later at N400 component. Also, correlation analysis revealed that children’s reading performance did not correlate with their ability to delineate pictures and characters, nor the ability to detect orthographic violation.