Effect of logographeme length on reading in Chinese : evidence for logographeme representation using event-related potential

Abstract

In the investigation of writing errors of children and Chinese patients with dysgraphia, logographemes have been argued to be one of the core units of representation within a character (e.g., Han & Bi, 2009; Law & Leung, 2004). To verify whether the existence of logographeme representation occurs in reading, character frequency (high vs. low) and logographeme number (3 vs. 6) were manipulated, whilst controlling for visual complexity (i.e., stroke number), in an event-related potential (ERP) lexical decision task. Results indicated that latency for characters with 3 logographemes was shorter than ones with 6 logographemes. ERP findings revealed sensitivity to the number of logographemes present in a character at the P100 component whereby characters with fewer logographemes evoked a smaller P100 component particularly in the right hemisphere. The logographeme number effect was also found at the N170 component with greater negativity elicited for characters with 3 logographemes, but this was only constrained to low-frequency characters. No effects were found at P200 or N400 components. This study demonstrates neural sensitivity to logographeme representations at the early stages of character recognition, and proposes including logographeme representation between stroke and radical units in models of Chinese character recognition (Perfetti, Liu, & Tan, 2005; Taft & Zhu, 1997).