Electrophysiological correlates of morphological processing in Chinese compound word recognition

Abstract

The present study investigated the electrophysiological correlates of morphological processing in Chinese compound word reading using a delayed repetition priming paradigm. Participants were asked to passively view lists of two-character compound words containing prime-target pairs separated by a few items. In a Whole Word repetition condition, the prime and target were the same real words (e.g., , manager-manager). In a Constituent repetition condition, the prime and target were swapped in terms of their constituent position (e.g., , the former is a pseudo-word and the later means nurse). Two ERP components including N200 and N400 showed repetition effects. The N200 showed a negative shift upon repetition in the Whole Word condition but this effect was delayed for the Constituent condition. The N400 showed comparable amplitude reduction across the two priming conditions. The results reveal different aspects of morphological processing with an early stage associated with N200 and a late stage with N400. There was also a possibility that the N200 effect reflect general cognitive processing, i.e., the detection of low-probability stimuli.

Chinese characters are read using not only visual but also writing motor information

“…This reduction of the N200 enhancement effect has been associated with increasing differences in visual deep orthographic processing between priming/prompt and target characters (Du et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2012; Zhang et al, 2013). However, in the current study, the variation of visual orthographic information was identical between the forward and backward conditions, so it is reasonable to speculate that the reduction derives from differences in sequential writing trajectory.…”

Extended categorization of conjunction object stimuli decreases the latency of attentional feature selection and recruits orthography-linked ERPs

“…Results of the mass univariate analysis for average reference were very similar although the N200 training effect (see below) was significant consistently as a positive difference at the mastoids and nearby electrodes and negative at fewer central electrodes (Figures S7, S8, S9). Results using average mastoids were also qualitatively similar: the N200 was more broadly distributed than the other methods (see also Du, Hu, & Fang, 2013;Du, Zhang, & Zhang, 2014), likely due to opposite effects at the mastoids (Figure S4), and the selection negativity was much smaller over the back of the head, likely because the effect extended anteriorly to the mastoids (Figures S2, S3), but still reached significance in some time windows (data available on request).…”

What makes written words so special to the brain?

“…Orthographic analysis in the later part of the N1 also seems to be sensitive to stimulus repetition, as shown by Du et al ( 2013 ). However, such N200 repetition effects appear to be delayed if word form configuration is changed, which can be achieved in Chinese by switching characters in two-morphemic words.…”