Consistency effects on lexical decision and naming of two-character Chinese words

This study with three experiments examined thenotion inherent in the Interactive ConstituencyModel of Perfetti and colleagues [Perfetti, C.A.,Liu, Y. & Tan, L.H. (2002) In H.S.R. Kao, C.K. Leong &D.-G. Gao (Eds.), Cognitive neuroscience studies of the Chinese language (pp. 35–60). Hong Kong: Hong Kong UniversityPress; Perfetti, C.A. & Tan, L.H. (1999) In J. Wang,A.W. Inhoff & H.-C. Chen (Eds.), ReadingChinese script: A cognitive analysis (pp. 115–134).Mahwah, New Hersey: Lawrence Erlbaum] thatin reading 2-character Chinese wordsphonology is activated at the character levelrather than at the word level. Specifically,the effect of phonological inconsistency(multiple pronunciations) of constituentcharacters on the visual recognition of2-character Chinese words found by Tan andPerfetti (Experiment 2) [(1999) Journal ofExperimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, andCognition, 25, 382–393] was furthertested in 2 lexical decision experiments (1and 2a) with sample sizes of 42 and 47 nativeCantonese-speaking Chinese university students.Using the same stimulus materials with someneeded slight variations, the two experimentsfound the target items with the constituentinconsistent characters were processed fasterthan the control two-character words withconsistent characters and this inconsistencyeffect of heterophonic homographs would stillbe compatible with character-level phonology. The words with the consistent constituentcharacter on the left (inconsistency on theright constituent) were processed faster thanthose with the consistent constituent characteron the right (inconsistency on the leftconstituent). In Experiment 2b the control orconsistent words were named faster than thecorresponding inconsistent words and there wasno left–right positional difference for theinconsistency. Taken together, the two lexicaldecision experiments and the naming experimentuphold the generality of character-levelconsistency effect of heterophonic homographs,even though there are some slight variationsfrom the original study.