title: The Inversion Effect for Chinese Characters is Modulated by Radical Organization.
abstract: In studies of visual object recognition, strong inversion effects accompany the acquisition of expertise and imply the involvement of configural processing. Chinese literacy results in sensitivity to the orthography of Chinese characters. While there is some evidence that this orthographic sensitivity results in an inversion effect, and thus involves configural processing, that processing might depend on exact orthographic properties. Chinese character recognition is believed to involve a hierarchical process, involving at least two lower levels of representation: strokes and radicals. Radicals are grouped into characters according to certain types of structure, i.e. left-right structure, top-bottom structure, or simple characters with only one radical by itself. These types of radical structures vary in both familiarity, and in hierarchical level (compound versus simple characters). In this study, we investigate whether the hierarchical-level or familiarity of radical-structure has an impact on the magnitude of the inversion effect. Participants were asked to do a matching task on pairs of either upright or inverted characters with all the types of structure. Inversion effects were measured based on both reaction time and response sensitivity. While an inversion effect was observed in all 3 conditions, the magnitude of the inversion effect varied with radical structure, being significantly larger for the most familiar type of structure: characters consisting of 2 radicals organized from left to right. These findings indicate that character recognition involves extraction of configural structure as well as radical processing which play different roles in the processing of compound characters and simple characters.
authors.affiliation: Institutes of Psychological Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.|Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, No.2318, Yuhangtang Rd, Cangqian, Yuhang District, Hangzhou, 311121, Zhejiang, China.|Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
authors.forename: Canhuang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Science Division, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institutes of Psychological Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. zhangye.lucia@gmail.com.|Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, No.2318, Yuhangtang Rd, Cangqian, Yuhang District, Hangzhou, 311121, Zhejiang, China. zhangye.lucia@gmail.com.|Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. zhangye.lucia@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Character structure; Chinese character; Configural processing; Inversion effect