Recognizing two dialects in one written form: A Stroop study

Abstract

This study aims to examine the influence of dialectal experience on logographic visual word recognition. Two groups of Chinese monolectals and three groups of Chinese bi-dialectals performed Stroop color-naming in Standard Chinese (SC), and two of the bi-dialectal groups also in their regional dialects. The participant groups differed in dialectal experiences. The ink-character relation was manipulated in semantics, segments, and tones separately, as congruent, competing, or different, yielding ten Stroop conditions for comparison. All the groups showed Stroop interference for the conditions of segmental competition, as well as evidence for semantic activation by the characters. Bi-dialectal experience, even receptive, could benefit conflict resolution in the Stroop task. Chinese characters can automatically activate words in both dialects. Comparing naming in Standard Chinese and naming in the bi-dialectals’ regional dialects, still, a regional-dialect disadvantage suggests that the activation is biased with literacy and lexico-specific inter-dialectal relations.