Reduced holistic processing in the development of Chinese orthographic representations

Abstract

In contrast to alphabetic languages, Chinese has a logographic writing system where a character typically represents a morpheme and a monosyllabic pronunciation. Chinese characters consist of strokes, which combine to form about 200 basic stroke patterns, which in turn form the characters. Due to its visual complexity, Chinese character processing was thought to involve holistic pattern recognition. Nevertheless, Hsiao and Cottrell (2009) showed that expert Chinese character processing involves reduced holistic processing assessed by the composite paradigm, which is commonly used for examining holistic processing in face and object recognition. Here we test the hypothesis that this reduced holistic processing is related to character writing experience. In the first study, we recruited Chinese readers who were experienced character writers (Writers), Chinese readers who had limited writing exposure (Limited-writers), and non-Chinese readers (Novices). Compared with Novices, Writers showed reduced holistic processing whereas Limited-writers showed increased holistic processing of characters, suggesting that writing experience modulates holistic processing. In the second study, we recruited children who were learning Chinese at a local primary school. We found that children had reduced holistic processing as they reached higher grades; this reduction was driven by enhanced Chinese literacy rather than age. In addition, children's writing performance predicts reading performance through reduced holistic processing as a mediator. In contrast, non-Chinese-speaking children did not show significant changes in holistic processing across grades. These results suggest that writing hones analytic (reduced holistic) processing, which is essential for the development of Chinese orthographic representations, which in turn facilitates Chinese reading.