Spatial Stroop interference occurs in the processing of radicals of ideogrammic compounds

Abstract

In this study, we investigated whether the meanings of radicals are involved in reading ideogrammic compounds in a spatial Stroop task. We found spatial Stroop effects of similar size for the simple characters [symbol: see text] ("up") and [symbol: see text] ("down") and for the complex characters [symbol: see text] ("nervous") and [symbol: see text] ("nervous"), which are ideogrammic compounds containing a radical [symbol: see text] or [symbol: see text], in Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiment 3, the spatial Stroop effects were also similar for the simple characters [symbol: see text] ("east") and [symbol: see text] ("west") and for the complex characters [symbol: see text] ("state") and [symbol: see text] ("spray"), which contain [symbol: see text] and [symbol: see text] as radicals. This outcome occurred regardless of whether the task was to identify the character (Exps. 1 and 3) or its location (Exp. 2). Thus, the spatial Stroop effect emerges in the processing of radicals just as it does for processing simple characters. This finding suggests that when reading ideogrammic compounds, (a) their radicals' meanings can be processed and (b) ideogrammic compounds have little or no influence on their radicals' semantic processing.

Lexical processing of Chinese sub-character components: Semantic activation of phonetic radicals as revealed by the Stroop effect

“…Previous studies have examined whether the processing of radical can emerge by using the Stroop-like tasks 19 , 20 and Luo et al . 20 also studied whether the semantic information of phonetic radicals can be activated using a Spatial-Stroop task.…”

“…Previous studies have examined whether the processing of radical can emerge by using the Stroop-like tasks 19 , 20 and Luo et al . 20 also studied whether the semantic information of phonetic radicals can be activated using a Spatial-Stroop task. Although the research questions and paradigms share similarities with ours, the current study differed from theirs in the following manipulations: 1) They did not specify their radicals as semantic or phonetic radicals (unlike the current study, where we emphasized on semantic activation of phonetic radicals), and between valid and invalid phonetic radicals.…”

“…In the current study, we used the Stroop paradigm to examine whether a phonetic radical’s meaning is also activated in a character. Previous studies have used the Stroop paradigm and found semantic activation of radicals 19 , 20 , but they did not differentiate semantic vs. phonetic radicals, and especially did not emphasize on the possibility of semantic activation of phonetic radicals. Semantic radicals can activate their meanings as shown in previous studies 4 – 6 , hence if the radicals being investigated included semantic radicals, their meanings may have more likely been activated and led to the Stroop effect.…”

Sense and Sensitivity – Using Spatial Response-Compatibility Effects to Investigate Ambiguous Word Meaning

“…In addition, we tested a possibility following from Luo et al (2014). These authors found SR compatibility effects based on vertical meanings of Chinese ideogrammic compounds even under semantically opaque conditions (see Table 1).…”

Lack of visual field asymmetries for spatial cueing in reading parafoveal Chinese characters

“…For example, 妈 (Bmother^) is constructed from a phonetic radical 马 (Bhorse^) and a semantic radical 女 (Bfemale^). About 13 % of complex characters are ideogrammic compounds constructed by combining two or three radicals' meanings, and these radicals are unrelated to the host character in pronunciation (e.g., Luo, Proctor, & Weng, 2015;Luo, Proctor, Weng, & Li, 2014). For instance, combining 日 (Bsun^) and 月 (Bmoon^), the two natural sources of light, makes 明 (Bbright^).…”