Introduction

1. Introduction • The necessity of phonemic processes in words recognition of alphabetic orthographies has been an object of study for a long time. By comparing between different tasks, the importance of phonemic processes in alphabetic orthographies has been addressed (Forster & Chambers, 1973; Waters & Seidenberg, 1985; Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987). • From 1980 on, the same issue in Chinese character recognition has been discussed. But this issue in Chinese character recognition is still an unsettled question. Some approved the phonemic processes is necessary (Shih & Cheng, 1988; Cheng, 1992; Perfetti & Tan,1997;1998). Some objected the necessity of phonemic processes in Chinese character recognition (Wu & Chen, 2000; Wu & Chou, 2000; Chen & Shu, 2001; Liu, Wu, & Chou,1996). • The Chinese compound words have some properties similar to the word in alphabetic orthographies.However, only few attempts have so far been made at the necessity of the phonetic process in lexical access about Chinese compound words. The purpose here is to explore a little further into this issue. • The part of pseudo-words in LDT. The results are listed in Table 2. The effect of homophonic was around the boundary of significance only by subject, F1(1,52) = 3.71, p = .0564; F2(1,156) = 0.72, p = 0.5980. Is phonetic process necessary in Chinese compound word recognition?Wei-Chun Lin Jei-Tun WuDepartment of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan Table 1. • Method • Experiment 1 • Participants. Fifty-three NTU students. The first language is Chinese. • Stimulus materials. Eighty Chinese compound words. Eighty pairs of homophonic pseudo-words and its control pseudo-words. Forty Chinese compound words fillers. • Design.2(Chinese compound words frequency) × 2(first character frequency) factorial design, with both variables being within-subject in true words. Single factorial (homophonic vs. control) design in pseudo-words. • Procedure. LDT • Experiment 2 • Participants.Twenty-four NTU students. The first language is Chinese. • Stimulus materials. Eighty Chinese compound words used in experiment 1. • Design. 2(Chinese compound words frequency) × 2(first character frequency) factorial design, with both variables being within-subject. • Procedure. Naming task. Table 2. • Conclusion • The pattern of Chinese compound words in LDT and Naming task is similar to English. The words frequency effect in naming task is less than that in LDT, and the speeds of naming task were faster than the speeds of LDT. This result supported that the phonetic process in lexical access about Chinese compound words has some degree function. • This result also imply that we have to deal with characters level in lexical access about Chinese compound words. The significant of character frequency effect in low word frequency and character frequency effect in naming task supported this point. • Although the effect of the homophonic in pseudo-words was in significant boundary, the pattern showed that the homophonic pseudo-word faster than the control pseudo-word. This also support that the phonological information might play some roles in lexical access about Chinese compound words. • Further work will be conducted to aim at the role of character level phonological information work in lexical access about Chinese compound words. • Result • The part of true Chinese compound words in LDT. Response latencies and percentages of errors are listed in Table 1. The effect of Chinese compound words frequency was significant, F1(1,52) = 53.68, p < .0001; F2(1,76) = 46.38, p < .0001. The interaction between word frequency and character frequency was significant, F1(1,52) = 7.14, p < .01; F2(1,76) = 4.66, p < .05. The simple main effect of character frequency under low word frequency was weakly significant, F1(1,104) = 4.71, p < .05; F2(1,76) = 3.34, p > .05. • The results of naming task arealso listed in Table 1. The effect of Chinese compound words frequency was significant, F1(1,23) = 16.65, p < .001; F2(1,76) = 4.70, p < .05. The effect of first character frequency was significant, F1(1,23) = 17.20, p < .001; F2(1,76) = 7.29, p < .01. The interaction between word frequency and character frequency was significant only by subject, F1(1,23) = 5.77, p < .05; F2(1,76) = 1.95. The simple main effect of character frequency under low word frequency was significant, F1(1,46) = 21.92, p < .0005; F2(1,76) = 8.38, p < .01. Acknowledgement This study is partly supported by National Science Council, Taiwan. (Project No: NSC94-2413-H-002-030 ) Correspondence: jtwu@ntu.edu.tw