Is Chinese read by a process that bypasses phonology, or is phonology a part of word identification as it is in alphabetic writing systems? Two experiments provide evidence that phonological information is activated as part of Chinese character identification. When participants made judgments about the meanings of pairs of characters, their reaction times and error rates to homophonic foils showed phonological interference. Correspondingly, when they made judgments about the pronunciation of pairs of characters, they showed semantic interference. The 2nd experiment found phonological interference with only 90 ms stimulus onset asynchrony and semantic interference at 140 ms. These results are accounted for by a class of models that assume that phonological names are constituents of word identification in Chinese. The results provide support for a universal principle of phonological processes in reading.

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.

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We also acknowledge the contributions of Tianwei Xie to the experiments and the generous assistance of Bin Yu and Chunqing Cheng in developing computer programs. We thank Maureen Marron, Mara Georgi, Betty Ann Levy, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on a draft of the article.