There is a large number of similar phonological structures(phonological neighbors) in Chinese, which constitute many families with different number of “similar neighbors”. The relationship among these similar members and the different quantity among different families, along with other related factors, have an effect on auditory speech processing, which is worth paying attention to if we want to know how the speech is recognized and extracted correctly before accessing characters and semantic layer. There has been a lot of research about the structure of higher-level of lexical items including characters, meaning and concept organization at present. However, few researchers have focused on the representation and processing at the phonological level.The few related studies either lack rigorous systematic knowledge of Chinese phonological structures and the relationship among them or confuse the effects of factors from character-semantic layer with effects of phonological neighborhood structures. As a result, most of the studies cannot point out which are the main factors and which are not.In this study, all of the findings are based on comprehensive and system-level statistical analysis of Chinese phonological structures and their relationship with characters. Two auditory decision experiments were done in this investigation, which concerned about the effects of phonological neighborhood structures in Chinese auditory speech processing. Finally, a correlation analysis and a multiple regression analysis were performed to consider multiple factors within a single analysis and determine the main factors.Effects of neighborhood density, homophonic character count and frequency were investigated in experiment 1. According to the analysis of reaction times(RT) and accuracy data, all of these variables have significant effects on auditory speech processing. Syllables with dense phonological neighbors need less reaction time and recognized with higher accuracy. Syllables with higher homophonic character count were recognized more accurately. When other factors ware controlled, syllables with high frequency ware easier to process than that of syllables with low frequency. In addition, the effects of neighborhood density were affected by homophonic character count and frequency. Syllables with higher homophonic character count affected less by neighborhood density. Compare to low frequent syllables, homophonic character count has less effects among high frequent syllables, so the effects of neighborhood density were more obvious among high frequent syllables.Two variables closely related to phonological neighborhood are of interest in experiment 2: neighborhood homophonic character count and neighborhood frequency.The results from RT and accuracy analysis showed significant effects of both neighborhood homophonic character count and neighborhood frequency. Syllables with more neighborhood homophonic character count and neighborhood frequency were recognized faster and more accurately. In addition, there was interaction between them. Syllables with higher neighborhood homophonic character count were affected more by neighborhood frequency. According to the results from correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis correlation analysis and a multiple regression analysis, neighborhood homophonic character count and neighborhood frequency affected auditory speech processing indirectly via the correlation with neighborhood density.The correlation between RT and frequency, homophonic character count, neighborhood frequency, neighborhood homophonic character count, neighborhood density, initial-different neighborhood density, glide-different neighborhood density, nucleus-different neighborhood density, ending-different neighborhood density, tone-different neighborhood density were analyzed after the two experiments. There’s high correlation between RT and frequency, neighborhood density, initial-different neighborhood density, glide-different neighborhood density, nucleus-different neighborhood density. Among them, neighborhood density and frequency showed independent effects on auditory speech processing, which made them the most significant factors. Initial-different neighborhood density and nucleus-different neighborhood density also had an important effect on the decision tasks. |