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. 2017 Dec 19:8:2230.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02230. eCollection 2017.

Semantic Radicals Contribute More Than Phonetic Radicals to the Recognition of Chinese Phonograms: Behavioral and ERP Evidence in a Factorial Study

Xieshun Wang  1 , Meng Pei  1 , Yan Wu  2 , Yanjie Su  1
Affiliations

Semantic Radicals Contribute More Than Phonetic Radicals to the Recognition of Chinese Phonograms: Behavioral and ERP Evidence in a Factorial Study

Xieshun Wang et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The Chinese phonograms consist of a semantic radical and a phonetic radical. The two types of radicals have different functional contributions to their host phonogram. The semantic radical typically signifies the meaning of the phonogram, while the phonetic radical usually contains a phonological clue to the phonogram's pronunciation. However, it is still unclear how they interplay with each other when we attempt to recognize a phonogram because previous studies rarely manipulated the functionality of the two types of radicals in a single design. Using a full factorial design, the present study aimed to probe this issue by directly manipulating the functional validity of the two types of radicals in a lexical decision task with both behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measurements. The results showed that recognition of phonograms which were related to their semantic radicals in meaning took a shorter reaction time, showed a lower error rate, and elicited a smaller P200 and a larger N400 than did recognition of those which had no semantic relation with their semantic radicals. However, the validity of phonetic radicals did not show any main effect or interaction with that of semantic radicals on either behavioral or ERP measurements. These results indicated that semantic radicals played a dominant role in the recognition of phonograms. Transparent semantic radicals, which provide valid semantic cues to phonograms, can facilitate the recognition of phonograms.

Keywords: Chinese phonogram; ERP; functional validity; phonetic radical; semantic radical.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Experimental procedure in ERP Experiment.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
(A) Grand mean ERPs of the Transparent condition and Opaque condition in each electrode. (B) Topographical maps of scalp voltage showing the differences between the two conditions.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
(A) Grand mean ERPs of the Regular condition and Irregular condition in each electrode. (B) Topographical maps of scalp voltage showing the differences between the two conditions.
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