Orthographic and phonological facilitation in speech production: New evidence from picture naming in Chinese

Abstract

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oPicture naming is facilitated when a target picture (e.g. of a cat) is accompanied by a form-related context word (e.g. CAP) relative to an unrelated word (e.g. PEN). Because in alphabetic languages phonological and orthographic similarity are confounded, Chinese, a logographic language, has been employed to study these two effects in isolation. The results obtained suggest that the orthographic facilitation effect is localized at an earlier processing level than the phonological facilitation effect. In the present study we examine this issue again, using an experimental design in which the context words in the related and unrelated conditions are optimally matched. In contrast to the earlier studies Experiments 1 and 2 fail to show differences in the time course of the two context effects. Moreover, Experiment 3 provides direct evidence against an early, conceptual locus of orthographic facilitation. Our findings indicate that in Chinese language production both orthographically and phonologically related context words have their effect at the rather late level of word-form encoding.

Seriality of semantic and phonological processes during overt speech in Mandarin as revealed by event-related brain potentials

“…This question is difficult to answer with alphabetic languages (but see Lupker, 1982;Posnansky & Rayner, 1978;Underwood & Briggs, 1984). In a growing number of recent studies, researchers have therefore taken advantage of the fact that in languages with non-alphabetic scripts, orthographic and phonological relatedness can be dissociated, and have reported PWI studies with Chinese distractors (Bi, Xu, & Caramazza, 2009;Zhang, Chen, Weekes, & Yang, 2009;Zhao, La Heij, & Schiller, 2012). The pattern of results is somewhat complex, but it is clearly the case that both phonological and orthographic overlap between distractor and target name generate independent facilitation effects.…”

Additivity of semantic and phonological effects: Evidence from speech production in Mandarin

“…Orthographic facilitation effects were found at SOA = 0 ms and +150 ms. Earlier findings by had shown orthographic priming which emerged at SOAs of -150 ms, 0 ms, and +150 ms. Zhao et al (2012) showed the strongest orthographic priming at SOA = 0 ms, and relatively less priming at more peripheral SOAs. Again we conclude that there is some unaccounted variability with regard to the time course of semantic, orthographic, and phonological effects in PWI tasks.…”

“…Furthermore, orthographic and phonological factors were additive at SOAs of -150 ms and 0 ms, but interacted at SOA = +150 ms. From these results, the authors inferred, in line with Bi et al's (2009) argument, that orthographic and phonological relatedness effects arise at independent processing levels: orthographically related distractors prime "lemmas" directly via the "input priming" account outlined above; phonologically related distractors affect phonological encoding proper. However, Zhao, La Heij, and Schiller (2012) in a similar study found larger facilitation for phonologically than for orthographically related distractors, and both types of relatedness appeared under comparable SOAs. From this the authors concluded that contrary to Bi et al and Zhang et al's view, both orthographic and phonological overlap generate priming at the level of phonological encoding.…”

“…In our Experiment 3, the orthographically related distractors shared a radical with the target name. To account for priming effects from these distractors, one could assume that a cohort of orthographically related items is co-activated in the orthographic lexicon, and that these activate their corresponding entries in the phonological lexicon (indeed, these assumptions are very similar to the model outlined by Zhao et al, 2012). Again, form-related priming would take place at the level of the (atonal) syllable.…”

Confrontation Naming Errors in Alzheimer's Disease

“…In contrast to an alphabetic language, such as English, Chinese characters belong to a logographic language meaning that the phonological representation and the semantic conceptual level might be independently activated at an earlier process in picture naming [31,32]. Phonological processing of Chinese characters requires more spatial and verbal working memory compared to alphabetic words [33].…”