title: It's a word: early electrophysiological response to the character likeness of pictographs.
abstract: Using unfamiliar and meaningless pictographs that varied in their degree of similarity to Chinese characters, the current study tested whether the early electrophysiological response was modulated by character likeness. We measured P100 and N170 while 20 native Chinese speakers were viewing Chinese characters, drawings of objects, and pictographs. Comparisons across the three categories of stimuli showed that pictographs elicited a smaller N170 amplitude than did Chinese characters and a stronger N170 amplitude than did objects, but did not differ in the P100 amplitude from the other two categories. Within the category of pictographs, stimuli with a higher degree of character likeness elicited larger N170 amplitudes and shorter N170 peak latencies, and this effect was again not observed in P100. These results suggest that N170 is sensitive to visual stimuli's character likeness even though they are unfamiliar pictographs with no meanings or sounds.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Mingxia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Leilei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mei
authors.forename: Hongmin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Chuansheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Gui
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Dong
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation