PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN READING CHINESE CHARACTERS

Native Chinese speakers participated in character identification tasks that differ in the extent to which they involve prelexical vs. postlexical phonological processes. A backward visual masking procedure previously found to show prelexical phonemic effects in English failed to produce such effects in reading Chinese characters. Two priming experiments, by contrast, found evidence for semantic and phonological priming in the identification of masked characters (Experiment 3) and in speed of character naming (Experiment 4). The results confirm the assumption that character identification is not mediated by phonemic processes but also demonstrate that the identification of a printed character immediately causes the activation of its pronunciation. The results support a general orthography-independent principle of reading: Printed word forms routinely and automatically arouse phonological representations as part of their identification.