TITLE

Rapid Extraction of Lexical Tone Phonology in Chinese Characters: A Visual Mismatch Negativity Study

AUTHOR(S)

Wang, Xiao-Dong; Liu, A-Ping; Wu, Yin-Yuan; Wang, Peng

PUB. DATE

February 2013

SOURCE

PLoS ONE;Feb2013, Vol. 8 Issue 2, p1

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

Background: In alphabetic languages, emerging evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies shows the rapid and automatic activation of phonological information in visual word recognition. In the mapping from orthography to phonology, unlike most alphabetic languages in which there is a natural correspondence between the visual and phonological forms, in logographic Chinese, the mapping between visual and phonological forms is rather arbitrary and depends on learning and experience. The issue of whether the phonological information is rapidly and automatically extracted in Chinese characters by the brain has not yet been thoroughly addressed. Methodology/Principal Findings: We continuously presented Chinese characters differing in orthography and meaning to adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers to construct a constant varying visual stream. In the stream, most stimuli were homophones of Chinese characters: The phonological features embedded in these visual characters were the same, including consonants, vowels and the lexical tone. Occasionally, the rule of phonology was randomly violated by characters whose phonological features differed in the lexical tone. Conclusions/Significance: We showed that the violation of the lexical tone phonology evoked an early, robust visual response, as revealed by whole-head electrical recordings of the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), indicating the rapid extraction of phonological information embedded in Chinese characters. Source analysis revealed that the vMMN was involved in neural activations of the visual cortex, suggesting that the visual sensory memory is sensitive to phonological information embedded in visual words at an early processing stage.

ACCESSION #

87624921

 

Related Articles

• What's Your Tone of Voice? Friedman, Nancy // Sales & Service Excellence Essentials;Oct2004, Vol. 4 Issue 10, p13 

  Offers advice on the proper tone of voice in business communication. Key factors in delivering service excellence.

• The role of phonology in reading Chinese single characters and two-character words with high, medium and low phonological regularities by Chinese grade 2 and grade 5 students. Ledong Li // Reading Research Quarterly;Oct-Dec2002, Vol. 37 Issue 4, p372 

  Investigates the role of phonological processing in reading Chinese single characters and two-character words. Effects of level of phonological regularity in compound Chinese characters; Differences in phonological processing by more literate and less literate readers.

• Whole word, frequency-general phonology in semantic processing of Chinese characters. Sulan Zhang; Perfetti, Charles A. // Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory & Cognition;Jul99, Vol. 25 Issue 4, p858 

  Examines the locus of the phonological and semantic interference effects in Chinese characters. Generality of phonological effects in semantic judgments across word frequency and independent of component phonology; Localization of phonological interference at the whole-character level; Effects...

• Orthography and phonology in reading Japanese kanji words: Evidence from the semantic decision... Sakuma, Naoko; Sasanuma, Sumiko // Memory & Cognition;Jan98, Vol. 26 Issue 1, p75 

  Focuses on the role of phonology in reading comprehension of Japanese kanji words recognition. Reference to several clinical studies involving kanji word recognition; What is the role of phonology in visual word recognition; Details on two possible explanations for the inconsistent effects of...

• CROSSLANGUAGE DIFFERENCES IN TONE PERCEPTION: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING INVESTIGATION. Gandour, Jackson T.; Harshman, Richard A. // Language & Speech;Jan-Mar78, Vol. 21 Issue 1, p1 

  Reports on findings of a study of crosslanguage differences in tone perception. Study method; Dimensions underlying the perception of linguistic time; Extent of an individual's language background that influence perception; Results of discriminant and regressional analysis.

• The syllable in Old Chinese: sub-syllabic processes, syllable structure, and the status of medial glides. Hsu, Dong-Bo // Journal of East Asian Linguistics;Nov2009, Vol. 18 Issue 4, p361 

  How to represent a syllable is by no means a settled question in generative grammar. This paper employs the diagnostic tool Replace (X) to examine the sub-syllabic constituency in Old Chinese (OC) by virtue of two types of directional reduplication data: progressive and retrogressive...

• Phonetic or phonological contrasts in Dutch boundary tones? Heuven, Vincent J. van; Kirsner, Robert S. // Linguistics in the Netherlands;2004, Vol. 21, p102 

  The article focuses on phonetic or phonological contrasts in Dutch boundary tones. Categorization of sounds may proceed along several possible lines. First, many differences between sounds are simply too small to be heard at all, these are subliminal. A relatively recent insight, therefore, is...

• Romualdo Granausko kÅ«ksinÄ—s tarmybÄ—s. AKELAITIENĖ, Gražina; ŽILIŪTĖ-BATAVIČIENĖ, Dainora // Man & the Word / Zmogus ir zodis;2011, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p5 

  The article discusses lexical dialectical units in Romualdas Granauskas' vrorks. Empirical material was collected from the works which best reveal him as a representative of the North Samogitian dialect (the collection of works "The Singing of Animals" ("Gyvulėlių dainavimas") (1998) and...

• What is Lexical Tuning? WILKS, YORICK; CATIZONE, ROBERTA // Journal of Semantics;May2002, Vol. 19 Issue 2, p167 

  The paper contrasts three approaches to the extension of lexical sense: what we shall call, respectively, lexical tuning; a second based on lexical closeness and relaxation; and a third known as underspecification, or the use of lexical rules. These approaches have quite different origins in...

Read the Article