A corpus of Chinese word segmentation agreement.

The absence of explicit word boundaries is a distinctive characteristic of Chinese script, setting it apart from most alphabetic scripts, leading to word boundary disagreement among readers. Previous studies have examined how this feature may influence reading performance. However, further investigations are required to generate more ecologically valid and generalizable findings.

Printing words in alternating colors facilitates eye movements among young and older Chinese adults.

It is well known that the Chinese writing system lacks visual cues for word boundaries, such as interword spaces. However, characters must be grouped into words or phrases for understanding, and the lack of interword spaces can cause certain ambiguity. In the current study, young and older Chinese adults' eye movements were recorded during their reading of naturally unspaced sentences, where consecutive words or nonwords were printed using alternating colors.

Rethinking orthographic neighbor in Chinese two-character word recognition: Insights from a megastudy.

The influence of orthographic neighbors on visual word recognition is well established in alphabetic scripts. To determine the universality of this effect across writing systems, researchers have been keen on exploring its presence and nature in Chinese word recognition. Given that Chinese is logographic, it necessitates a different definition for orthographic neighbors from the ones used in alphabetic scripts.

Tonal and syllabic encoding in overt Cantonese Chinese speech production: An ERP study.

This study was conducted to investigate how syllables and lexical tones are processed in Cantonese speech production using the picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore an accompanying auditory word distractor. The target and distractor either shared the same word-initial syllable with the same tone (Tonal-Syllable related), the same word-initial syllable without the same tone (Atonal-Syllable related), the same tone only (Tone alone related), or were phonologically unrelated.

Comparing word recognition in simplified and traditional Chinese: A megastudy approach.

Although it is well established that the visual complexity of a written word can influence processing, it is far less clear from a cross-script perspective, whether the overall visual complexity of the entire written lexicon also affects word recognition. This question can be answered with the data in megastudy of lexical decision in Chinese (MELD-CH), which was developed with over 800 participants responding to 12,587 simplified and traditional Chinese words. The results showed that lexical decision was slower but more accurate in simplified Chinese, which has about 22.

Full-form vs. combinatorial processing of Chinese compound words: Evidence from mismatch negativity.

This study examined whether Chinese spoken compound words are processed via full-form access or combination through morphemes by recording mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN has been shown to be larger for linguistic units that involves full-form access (lexical MMN enhancement) and smaller for separate but combinable units (combinatorial MMN reduction). Chinse compound words were compared against pseudocompounds, which do not have full-form representations in the long-term memory and are "illegal" combinations.

An ERP megastudy of Chinese word recognition.

This article reports the first ERP (event-related potential) megastudy in traditional Chinese word recognition. Fifty-one native Chinese undergraduates in Hong Kong, who were native Cantonese speakers, provided ERP data to 1020 two-character words and 204 two-character pseudowords in a go/no-go lexical decision task (go trials: pseudowords). The item list and the ERP data were compiled into a database called "E-MELD" (ERP MEgastudy of Lexical Decision).

Semantic Transparency in Chinese Compound Word Processing: Evidence from Mismatch Negativity.

This study examined how semantic transparency modulated the processing of spoken Chinese compound words with event-related potential (ERP) recording. A reverse-block passive oddball paradigm was adopted to elicit mismatch negativity (MMN), which responds to holistic and combinatorial processing in opposite directions. Specifically, linguistic inputs that are processed as holistic lexical representations will elicit stronger MMNs (lexical enhancement) than those that do not have such representations.

Morpho-semantic analysis of ambiguous morphemes in Chinese compound word recognition: An fMRI study.

The present fMRI study examined the neural basis of processing context-supported or -unsupported interpretations of ambiguous morphemes during Chinese compound word reading in a masked priming lexical decision task. Targets were Chinese bimorphemic words that contained ambiguous morphemes. Prime words contained the same ambiguous morphemes with either the same meanings (context-supported interpretation) or different ones (context-unsupported interpretation).

Morphosemantic activation of opaque Chinese words in sentence comprehension.

Two cross-modal priming experiments were conducted to investigate morphological processing in Chinese spoken word recognition during sentence comprehension. Participants heard sentences that contained opaque prime words and performed lexical decisions on visual targets that were related to second morpheme meanings of opaque words or whole-word meanings. The targets were presented at the auditory onset of the second morphemes or the subsequent syllables after the opaque primes to examine the time course of effects.

The roles of lexical tone and rime during Mandarin sentence comprehension: An event-related potential study.

This study used event-related potential (ERP) recording to examine the role of lexical tone and rime in Mandarin Chinese spoken sentence comprehension. A violation paradigm was adopted, such that selected target syllables in the sentences were replaced with tone-violated, rime-violated, or double-violated syllables. Participants judged whether each sentence was congruent.

Behavioural evidence for segments as subordinate units in Chinese spoken word production: The form-preparation paradigm revisited.

It is widely acknowledged that phonemic segments are primary phonological units, processed serially, in spoken word production of Germanic languages. However, evidence for a behavioural effect of single-segment overlap on Chinese spoken word production is lacking. The current study adopted the form-preparation paradigm to investigate the effects of segment predictability and segment repetition separately, which were mixed in previous studies.

Semantic Radical Activation in Chinese Phonogram Recognition: Evidence from Event-Related Potential Recording.

Some previous studies suggested that semantic radicals are activated during Chinese character recognition. However, many details about semantic radical processing remain unresolved. This study examines an often-overlooked factor, namely the "character status" of the semantic radicals.

Neural evidence for reduced automaticity in processing emotional prosody among men with high levels of autistic traits.

This study aimed to examine individual differences in the integration of emotional prosody when processing semantic meaning in speech among men with high and low levels of autistic traits, as measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The behavioral and neural responses of high- and low-AQ men during semantic valence judgment were compared. The stimuli were positive or negative words spoken with either happy or sad prosody; in other words, the prosody was either congruous or incongruous to the valence of meaning.

MELD-SCH: A megastudy of lexical decision in simplified Chinese.

Here we report on MELD-SCH (MEgastudy of Lexical Decision in Simplified CHinese), a dataset that contains the lexical decision data of 1,020 one-character, 10,022 two-character, 949 three-character, and 587 four-character simplified Chinese words obtained from 504 native Chinese users. It also includes a number of word-level and character-level variables. Analyses showed that the reliability of the dataset is satisfactory, as indicated by split-half correlations and comparisons with other datasets.

Activation of morphemic meanings in processing opaque words.

Two masked priming experiments were conducted to examine the activation of morphemic forms and meanings during opaque word processing. In Experiment 1, opaque primes significantly facilitated the recognition of transparent targets, which was consistent with previous results. However, transparent primes did not influence the recognition of opaque targets.

Right hemisphere advantage in processing Cantonese level and contour tones: evidence from dichotic listening.

The brain lateralization pattern of Cantonese tonal processing was examined with the dichotic listening (DL) paradigm. Three factors were manipulated systematically in the study. First, the processing of level tones was compared with that of contour tones.

Morpho-semantic processing in word recognition: evidence from balanced and biased ambiguous morphemes.

The role of morphemic meaning in Chinese word recognition was examined with the masked and unmasked priming paradigms. Target words contained ambiguous morphemes biased toward the dominant or the subordinate meanings. Prime words either contained the same ambiguous morphemes in the subordinate interpretations or were unrelated to the targets.

Eye movement control in reading: Logographic Chinese versus alphabetic scripts.

Eye tracking is widely used to study the reading process in different languages. Given the unique properties of written Chinese, it is important to identify the similarities and differences in eye-movement controls between readers of Chinese and alphabetic scripts. In this article, we review the data available for comparison in four domains: (a) the perceptual span, (b) parafoveal processing, (c) the basic encoding unit, and (d) computer modeling.

ERPs reveal sub-lexical processing in Chinese character recognition.

The present study used ERPs and a lexical decision task to explore the roles of position-general and position-specific radicals and their relative time courses in processing Chinese characters. Two types of radical frequency were manipulated: the number of characters containing a specific radical irrespective of position (i.e.

Morphemic ambiguity resolution in Chinese: activation of the subordinate meaning with a prior dominant-biased context.

In the present study, we examined how morphemic ambiguity is resolved using the visual-world paradigm. Participants were presented with Chinese bimorphemic words containing an ambiguous morpheme (analogous to the suffix -er in teacher and taller) and performed a visual search task. Their eye-movement patterns during target detection showed that (1) without a prior context, the dominant meaning of an ambiguous morpheme was more available than the subordinate one; (2) with a dominant-biased prior context, the subordinate meaning was still activated; and (3) a subordinate-biased prior context could inhibit the dominant interpretation.

ERP correlates of pre-attentive processing of Cantonese lexical tones: The effects of pitch contour and pitch height.

The pre-attentive processing of Cantonese tones was studied with an auditory passive oddball paradigm. Event-related potentials to standard and deviant auditory stimuli were recorded as participants watched a silent movie attentively. The standards and deviants differed in either pitch level or pitch contour.