The role of phonology in Chinese characters recognition : the influence of experimental tasks

Abstract

In order to explore the role that phonology play in Chinese characters recognition, 9 variables at lexical level (i.e. character frequency, number of words formation) and sub-lexical level (i.e. number of strokes, regularity, phonological consistency, family size) were used to predict their effects on Chinese lexical decision time by stepwise multiple regression analysis. The result showed that phonology played a significant role in feedback activation (i.e. homophones density and number of associated radicals) but not in feedforward activation. Moreover, we revealed differences in the cognitive process between lexical decision task and naming task. Since those task-specific properties may affect the result obtained, we further suggested that it should be careful in task selection and data interpretation in future psycholinguistic research.