title: Chinese readers can perceive a word even when it's composed of noncontiguous characters.
abstract: This study explored whether readers could recognize a word composed of noncontiguous characters (across-character word) in Chinese reading. All 3 experiments employed Chinese 4-character strings ABCD, where both AB and CD were 2-character words. In the cross-character word condition, AC was a word but in the control condition, AC was not a word. A character identification task was employed in Experiment 1 and sentence reading tasks were employed in Experiments 2 and 3. In all 3 experiments, an AC word produced inhibition effects. In Experiment 1, an AC word decreased the accuracy of character B identification, but increased the accuracy of character C identification. In Experiments 2 and 3, an AC word slowed reading on CD, indicating that the cross-character words were activated. These results imply that Chinese character encoding leading to word recognition does not proceed in a strictly serial way from left to right, or is strictly constrained by invisible word boundaries. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors: Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University.
authors: Guojie
authors: G
authors: Ma
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
authors: Alexander
authors: A
authors: Pollatsek
authors: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
authors: Yugang
authors: Y
authors: Li
authors: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
authors: Xingshan
authors: X
authors: Li
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary