| Chinese characters have a long history,which contains the outstanding wisdom and rich life philosophy of the ancestors.Phonograms are in the majority in Chinese characters,which are composed of radicals with different functions.The semantic radical encodes the meaning or semantic category of the whole character,while the phonetic radical represents the pronunciation of the whole character.In Chinese character recognition,the semantic and phonological activation of radicals has always been a research hotspot.Some radicals can either be a semantic radical in one character,a phonetic radical in another one,or simply be a part of a character without denoting pronunciation or a meaning of it.Up to now,few studies have focused on the semantic activation of the same radical with different functions in Chinese character recognition.Based on this,this research adopted the lexical priming decision task to study this issue,radical functions and the semantic relatedness between the radicals and the targets were manipulated.The specific research questions were listed as follows:(1)Can the semantic information of the same radical with different functions,i.e.the radical served as a semantic radical,a phonetic radical or a non-function component in different characters,be activated respectively in character recognition?(2)If the semantic information of the same radical with different functions can be activated respectively,what are the differences in their contribution to the whole character recognition?In order to answer the above research questions,this study applied the two-factor within-subject design of 3(radical function: radicals functioned as semantic radicals vs.radicals functioned as phonetic radicals vs.non-functional radicals)×2(Relatedness: radicals were semantically related with targets vs.radicals were semantically unrelated with target).Employing the reaction time technique,60 people from Sichuan International Studies University participated in the experiment,and their response time and accuracy rates were precisely recorded.In the experiment,the subjects were requested to judge whether the target was a real character or not as quickly and accurately as possible.The experiment was programmed with E-prime2.0 software,and the data were statistically analyzed by SPSS 22.0.The results were as follows:(1)By means of two-way repeated measures ANOVA,The main effect of semantic relatedness was not significant(F(1,55)=2.645,p=.110>.05,η~2=.046),but through pairwise comparisons,marginally significant difference was found between NR and NC(t=1.857,p=.069<1),PR and PC(t=1.68,p=.098<1),whil no statistically significant difference was found between SR and SC(t =-1.108,p=.273),which indicated that when radicals with the function of the phonetic radical or radicals with no specific function,the semantic representation embedded in them was activated,whereas the semantic activation of radicals functioning as semantic radicals was too weak to be perceived.(2)The main effect of radical function was significant(F(2,110)=5.994,p=.003<.05,η~2=.098),suggesting that under three different priming conditions,namely when the same radical acting as the semantic radical in one character,undertaking the function of the phonetic radical in another one or just being a part in the whole character,there were significant differences in the response time of the targets.Through multi-comparisons,significant difference was observed between the RTs of primes composed of opaque semantic radicals(SR)and that of primes composed of the same freestanding radicals functioning as phonetic radicals(PR),(F(1,55)= 10.171,p=.002,η~2=.156).Results also found that the RTs of primes involving the same character radicals with the function of opaque semantic radicals(SR)were statistically different from that of primes composed of freestanding radicals being parts of characters with no specific function(NR)(F(1,55)= 6.801,p=.012,η~2=.110).However,no significant difference was observed between RTs of primes functioning as phonetic radicals(PR)and of primes involving non-function radicals(NR)(F(1,55)=.344,p=.560,η~2=.006).All these results indicated that radical function had effects on Chinese character recognition and the contribution made by radicals with different functions was that non-function radicals played the most dominant role,Next followed by phonetic radicals whereas the effect of semantic radicals was the most minimal.(3)The interaction effect between radical function and semantic relatedness was marginally significant(F(2,110)=2.524,p=.085<1,η~2=.044),indicating that radical function and semantic relatedness affecting the character recognition.In different priming conditions,there were differences in the response time of the target characters under the related condition and the control condition.This further confirms that the semantic information embedded in radicals can be activated and the priming effect sizes are different.In general,the radical function and semantic relatedness had influence on the semantic activation of sub-lexical units and the whole character recognition.Previous studies have ignored the representation of radical function at both the lexical and sub-lexical levels,and most of them focused on healthy people,while few studies paid attention to the processing defects of Chinese characters in people with language disorders.In this research,radical function was used as a variable to conduct experiments,which provided a new idea for models of Chinese character recognition.Moreover,this paper reviewed studies of character processing in patients with language disorders and offered some suggestions for the rehabilitation of patients with language pathology based on the experiment results. |
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