title: Exploring orthographic neighborhood size effects in a computational model of Chinese character naming.
abstract: Orthographic neighborhood (N) size effects have been extensively studied in English consistently producing a facilitatory effect in word naming tasks. In contrast, several recent studies on Chinese character naming have demonstrated an inhibitory effect of neighborhood size. Response latencies tend to be inhibited by inconsistent characters with large neighborhoods relative to small neighborhoods. These differences in neighborhood effects between languages may depend on the characteristics (depth) of the mapping between orthography and phonology. To explore this, we first conducted a behavioral experiment to investigate the relationship between neighborhood size, consistency and reading response. The results showed an inhibitory effect of neighborhood size for inconsistent characters but a facilitatory effect for consistent characters. We then developed two computational models based on parallel distributed processing principles to try and capture the nature of the processing that leads to these results in Chinese character naming. Simulations using models based on the triangle model of reading indicated that consistency and neighborhood size interact with the division of labor between semantics and phonology to produce these effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK; Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Electronic address: yaningchang@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ya-Ning
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU), University of Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Welbourne
authors.affiliation: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chia-Ying
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Chinese character naming; Computational modeling; Consistency; Orthographic neighborhood size; Phonetic radical neighbors; Semantics