Lexical and lexical-semantic variables affecting the performance of Chinese speakers: a mixed logit models study on picture naming and reading aloud

Abstract

Lexical semantic variables such as word frequency, imageability and age of acquisition have long been studied in order to shed light on the cognitive processes underlying the performance of normal and aphasic speakers [1, 2]. However, little is known about the role of these variables in Chinese. Twenty Chinese aphasic patients (either fluent or non fluent) and twenty healthy individuals matched for age and education participated in this study. They were asked to read aloud written words and to name pictures of objects and actions. The probability of success on each item was estimated through mixed logit models (MLM) [3] on the basis of word frequency, imageability, age of acquisition, grammatical class (nouns vs. verbs), and morphological structure (simple vs. complex words). The use of MLM allowed us to assess the effects of the predictors: (i) more precisely, because of the reduction of the error variance; (ii) both in the whole sample of participants and in the individual subjects. The set of significant predictors differs in reading aloud and picture naming, with imageability playing an important role in the former task, and age of acquisition in the latter. More importantly, grammatical class, morphological structure, and their interaction turned out to be significant predictors in both task, indicating that simple nouns are much easier than complex nouns, but no difference arose between simple and complex verbs. These results will be discussed in the light of current models of lexical processing in Chinese [4] and compared to the results emerging from similar studies on Western languages [5]. References [1] Balota et al. (2004). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 283-316. [2] Nickels & Howard (1995). Neuropsychologia, 33, 1281-1303. [3] Jaeger (2008). Journal of Memory and Language 59, 434-446. [4] Bi et al. (2007). Neuropsychologia, 45, 2660-2673. [5] Baayen et al. (2006). Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 496-512.