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Reading Pinyin activates character orthography for highly experienced learners of Chinese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2017

LIN CHEN ,
CHARLES A. PERFETTI  and
YING LENG
LIN CHEN*
Affiliation:
School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University
CHARLES A. PERFETTI
Affiliation:
Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh
YING LENG
Affiliation:
School of Educational Science, Nan Tong University
*
Address for correspondence: Lin Chen, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, China, chenlin36@sysu.edu.cn
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Abstract

Does reading Pinyin, a Roman alphabet transcription of Chinese, cause the implicit activation of the corresponding Chinese character? To address this question, we carried out two experiments with adult Chinese learners, measuring interference in character reading in a modified Stroop task. Participants first made a meaning judgment on a Pinyin word, and then judged the printed color of a character that was either visually related or unrelated to the character that corresponded to the Pinyin word. A character orthographic interference effect was observed for advanced Chinese learners but not intermediate Chinese learners. The proficiency-dependent emergence of this interference effect suggests its dependence on Chinese character reading experience. For models of Chinese reading, the results demonstrate the role of the character as a gateway to meaning that, through reading experience, comes to be routinely involved in reading for meaning, whether the input is a character or an alphabetic spelling.

Keywords

Pinyinorthographyproficiencynon-native Chinese learners
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 103 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

This research was supported by China National Social Science Foundation 15CYY020 to Lin Chen.

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