Activation of phonological codes before access to character meaning in written Chinese

Abstract

Two experiments examined whether the speed of activating different aspects of a word's meaning influences the time course of accessing phonology and meaning. The authors used a backward masking paradigm with Chinese materials. When targets were exposed at threshold + 14 ms, homophonic masks were observed to facilitate target identification. Semantic masks in the absence of associative relatedness to targets did not affect recognition, irrespective of target semantic vagueness. Associate masks facilitated the recognition of semantically precise but not vague targets. These findings suggest that phonological activation precedes semantic activation and the activation of associative relatedness of vague-semantic characters. The authors argue that phonological codes are accessed through a character-as-a-whole-to-sound-as-a-whole association.