Poster E82, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 3:45 – 5:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Orthographic processing of Chinese characters: evidence from the sub-lexical level
Xiaodong Liu1, Yan Wu2, Suiping Wang3;1Ghent University, 2Northeast Normal University, 3South China Normal University
Prior research has shown that radicals (character components) play an important role in Chinese word recognition. Many studies including behavioral and ERPs research showed that the radical spatial position affects the processing of Chinese characters, but it is still unclear how this is done. In this study, we intend to employ advanced high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to investigate where is the radical position information processed in the human brain. Characters with different radical combinability (the number of characters sharing the same radical) are selected as stimuli and participants are required to decide whether the presented Chinese character refers to an animal or not. When considering position-specific radical combinability (SRC), by contrasting high SRC against low SRC, there was significantly greater activation in the left mid-fusiform region (VWFA, BA19), the bilateral middle frontal gyrus (BA9/46)，the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (BA9/45)，the bilateral middle temporal gyrus (BA19/21), the bilateral superior temporal gyrus (BA22/41), the left cerebellum posterior lobe and the right fusiform gyrus; while considering position- general radical combinability (GRC), by contrasting high GRC against low GRC, there was significantly greater activation in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus (BA8/9)，the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA45), the left medial frontal gyrus (BA6)，the right middle occipital gyrus (BA19) and the bilateral parahippocampal gyrus (BA30). These results suggest that radical position plays an important role in Chinese character reading, and the VWFA is sensitive to the processing of radical position information.
Themes: Reading, Meaning: Lexical Semantics
Method: Functional Imaging