title: Character Decomposition and Transposition of Chinese Compound Words in the Right and Left Visual Fields.
abstract: This study investigated the character decomposition and transposition processes of Chinese two-character compound words (canonical and transposed words) and pseudowords in the right and left visual fields using a dual-target rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. The results confirmed a right visual field superiority for canonical words, but this advantage vanished for transposed words. The findings further indicated that the same quality of lexical processing could be obtained from the foveal and parafoveal regions of the right and left visual fields, regardless of the character order, but not in the periphery of the right visual field. Moreover, the proportion of order reversals peaked at the central position and the shortest exposure time, but it declined with increasing eccentricity and time interval. We concluded that the character transposition of Chinese compound words was significantly sensitive in the periphery of the right visual field. Furthermore, the character order errors were mainly encoded in the foveal vision with a duration of 100 ms, which suggested that the order of the foveally presented Chinese characters was more likely to be reversed at the early stage of visual word processing.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Hong-Wen
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Kai-Fu
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China; Center for Information in Biomedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Hong-Mei
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Yan
keywords: Chinese compound words; character decomposition; character order errors; character transposition; right visual field superiority