PHONOLOGICAL ENCODING OF CHINESE IDEOGRAPHS IN SHORT‐TERM MEMORY¹

Abstract

Three main issues relating to the question of silent speech in reading are addressed: 1) How do Chinese speakers process Chinese ideographs in short‐term memory? 2) How is Chinese students' learning of written English affected by the transition to an alphabetic language? 3) Are the strategies for encoding written words in short‐term memory different for students of diverse language background? Chinese and Spanish bilingual students were tested for short‐term memory encoding strategies on word‐recognition tests. Chinese speakers were found to encode Chinese ideographs phonologically, but both Chinese and Spanish learners of English were found to encode English words visually. Implications for the acquisition of reading are discussed in terms of a two‐stage model.

Orthographic variations and visual information processing.

“…This argument was weakened by a recent study with Chinese children who had just started to learn Chinese characters. Chu- Chang and Loritz (1977) found that in a Chinese character recognition task, where a tachistoscopically presented character list was followed by a list consisting of corresponding phonological, visual, and semantic distracting characters. the children responded predominantly to phonological distractors.…”

Etymology-based instructional system: using hypermedia to teach the recognition of Chinese characters to beginning learners of Chinese as a second language

“…Characters and sentences which were phonemically either similar of dissimilar were presented to fluent native readers of Chinese. Results similar to those of Chu-Chang's (1979) and Chu-Chang and Loritz's (1977) studies were found: subjects required more time to read phonemically similar items.…”

“…For instance, American children of Harrigan's (1976) and Rozin, Poritsky, and Sotsky's (1971) studies did not know Chinese and learned characters by a visual approach. Chu-Chang and Loritz's (1977) Chinese subjects, who were proficient in Chinese reading but were not skilled in English, made more phonetic errors in Chinese lists and more visual errors in English lists.…”

“…To examine the mode of short-term memory storage for Chinese written symbols, Chu-Chang and Loritz (1977) conducted an experiment with Chinese bilingual subjects. A list of phonetically, semantically, and graphically similar Chinese characters and another list of English words were provided as reading material.…”

“…Regarding discrepancies in the findings of research focused on the mode of linguistic processing of Chinese orthography, Chu-Chang and Loritz (1977) suggested that there may be two stages in the reading process: the first stage being predominantly visual, and the second stage being predominantly phonological. That is, readers use a visual strategy (Stage I) when reading an unfamiliar language, whereas they use a more phonological strategy when reading a native-like language (Stage II).…”