Effects of semantic radicals in transparent and opaque Chinese characters recognition

1. Presented at The Seventh International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, June 30 - July 3, 2010, Windsor, Canada Effects of semantic radicals in transparent and opaque Chinese characters recognition Si-Cyun Yang Jei-Tun Wu Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan Result Research background Mean latencies and error percentages for conditions with semantic clearness and combinability concerned on semantic radicals --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transparent characters Opaque characters -------------------------------------- ------------------------------------- Semantic clearness Semantic clearness Combinability Clear Obscure Effect Clear Obscure Effect --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- mean latencies (ms) Large 461 473 +12** 468 460 -8 Small 474 453 -21*** 468 474 +6 Effect +13* -20*** 0 +14* error percentages (%) Large 2.6 2.1 2.1 1.3 Small 2.3 2.3 3.6 3.4 Effect1.5* 2.1* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *: p < .05; **: p < .01; ***: p < . 001 • Chinese characters are composed of radicals. For example, the character ‘談’ (tan2, ‘talk’) is composed of the semantic radical ‘言’ (ian2, ‘speak’) and the phonetic radical ‘炎’ (ian2, ‘hot’). • Two of semantic radicals’ features investigated in this study • Signifying meanings • Every semantic radical represents a specific semantic category. Most of their meanings are precise and could be recognized by readers. • Combinability • Feldman and Siok (1997) proposed the semantic combinability to index the numbers of characters that a given semantic radical appears in. Conclusion • Previous studies have found facilitatory combinability effect in transparent characters, which have semantic radicals with clear meaning. Our results also observed this facilitation effect (+13 ms) in the same situation. However, in opaque characters, no combinability effect was found (0 ms). • In two obscure conditions, combinability effects demonstrated reversed pattern. It was facilitation (+14 ms) in opaque characters, but was inhibition (-20 ms) in transparent characters. Theoretically, there is no transparent or opaque at all since meanings of semantic radicals were not recognized . We assigned characters to the transparent and opaque groups according to definition in dictionary.The finding needs further investigation. • Our results showed that semantic radicals do not play same roles in all kinds of characters. Probably, semantic radicals with obscure meanings are represented in different ways in the mental lexicon. • Li and Chen (1999) found that in low frequency characters, transparent characters were recognized faster than opaque ones. • Feldman and Siok (1997) found facilitatory combinability effect in transparent characters. Transparent characters with large combinability semantic radicals are recognized faster than those with small combinability semantic radicals. Method • Task: the standard character decision task • Factors: semantic clearness x combinability (the (1) & (2) in above table) • Participants: 32 undergraduate students in National Taiwan University • Materials: 48 transparent characters and 48 opaque characters with medium and medium-high frequencies were chosen as targets. Semantic radicals were divided into clear and obscure groups according to another 10 participants’ semantic judgments. Reference Li, H., & Chen, H. C. (1999). Radical processing in Chinese character recognition: Evidence from lexical decision. Psychologia, 42, 199-208. Feldman, L. B., & Siok, W. W. T. (1997). The role of component function in visual recognition of Chinese character. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 23, 776–781. This study was partly supported by National Science Council (NSC98-2410-H-002-027), Taiwan. Correspondence address: sicyun.yang@gmail.com