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Using unimodal auditory tasks of word-matching and meaning-matching, this study investigated how the phonological and semantic processes in Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition are modulated by top-down mechanism induced by experimental tasks. Both semantic similarity and word-initial phonological similarity between the primes and targets were manipulated. Results showed that at early stage of recognition (~150–250 ms), an enhanced P2 was elicited by the word-initial phonological mismatch in both tasks. In ~300–500 ms, a fronto-central negative component was elicited by word-initial phonological similarities in the word-matching task, while a parietal negativity was elicited by semantically unrelated primes in the meaning-matching task, indicating that both the semantic and phonological processes can be involved in this time window, depending on the task requirements. In the late stage (~500–700 ms), a centro-parietal Late N400 was elicited in both tasks, but with a larger effect in the meaning-matching task than in the word-matching task. This finding suggests that the semantic representation of the spoken words can be activated automatically in the late stage of recognition, even when semantic processing is not required. However, the magnitude of the semantic activation is modulated by task requirements.

In the present study, the time course of tonal and vowel information processing of the spoken words in Mandarin Chinese was investigated using a delayed-response paradigm. Idiomatic materials, providing semantically highly constraining contexts, were utilized. Besides being presented normally, the terminal monosyllabic words in idioms were manipulated with Tonal, Vowel, or Triple violations (i.e. with consonantal, tonal, and vowel mismatches). Event-related potential results showed that all three violations elicited larger widespread negativities in comparison with the Control condition, with the Triple violation effect starting first from 150 ms, then the Vowel violation, and the Tonal violation being the latest. The different starting times of the violation effects suggest that the access of tonal information is slower than that of vowel information, even though the lexical tones are very important in distinguishing the meaning of Chinese words.

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The present study investigated the effect of lexical competition on the time course of spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese using a unimodal auditory priming paradigm. Two kinds of competitive environments were designed. In one session (session 1), only the unrelated and the identical primes were presented before the target words. In the other session (session 2), besides the two conditions in session 1, the target words were also preceded by the cohort primes that have the same initial syllables as the targets. Behavioral results showed an inhibitory effect of the cohort competitors (primes) on target word recognition. The event-related potential results showed that the spoken word recognition processing in the middle and late latency windows is modulated by whether the phonologically related competitors are presented or not. Specifically, preceding activation of the competitors can induce direct competitions between multiple candidate words and lead to increased processing difficulties, primarily at the word disambiguation and selection stage during Mandarin Chinese spoken word recognition. The current study provided both behavioral and electrophysiological evidences for the lexical competition effect among the candidate words during spoken word recognition.