The use of radicals as processing units in writing Chinese: evidence from a patient who performed mirror-writing after stroke
-
1
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong, SAR China
Background
Penmanship drill, either in the format of mono- or multi-character words copying, is usually mandatory in Chinese classrooms starting from early grade levels. It was believed that the penmanship drill is effective in promoting the “orthographic memory” and in turn will facilitate learning to write. Despite the unknown causal relationship between this instruction method and the learning achievement, individuals learning to write Chinese managed to survive in this holistic drilling approach and eventually developed the representations stored in different modules involved in the functional processing models of writing, e.g. lexical level, the grapheme level, and the graphic motor patterns level (Ellis & Young, 2013).
Results of psycholinguistic studies reported that Chinese people employ strokes, logographemes and radicals as processing units when they write Chinese characters (e.g. Law & Leung, 2000; Han, Zhang, Shu, & Bi, 2007). That means in the execution stage, writing can be achieved by using sequential motoric memory of strokes production (hypothesis 1), clustered motoric memory of logographemes/radicals (hypothesis 2), or clustered motoric memory of characters (hypothesis 3). In the current study, we examine which one better explains the writing process of Chinese by looking at the handwriting performance of a mirror-writing patient, CSC.
CSC, a 56-year-old Cantonese Chinese lady suffering from stroke nine months before this study was conducted, was right-handed pre-morbidly. She started to use left hand for writing due to right-sided hemiplegia, and mirror characters resulted. Results of Cantonese version of Western Aphasia Battery (CAB) (Yiu, 1992) conducted 6 months before the study revealed no detectable aphasia. No perceptual defects in visuospatial and hearing was reported.
In this study, CSC’s handwriting performance in copying (1) real Chinese characters, (2) pseudo-characters composed by joining radicals together, (3) non-characters composed by joining pseudo-logographemes together and (4) line drawings were observed. If Hypothesis 1 is correct, the handwriting performance in (1), (2) and (3) should be comparable. If Hypothesis 2 is correct, more proficient performance in copying (1), (2) than (3) should be observed. If Hypothesis 3 is correct, more proficient performance in copying (1) than (2) and (3) should be observed. The line drawings served as control that if mirror-drawing was observed, the writing performance of CSC should not be inferred as representing motoric memory.
Method
CSC was instructed to use a stylus pen to copy the following items one by one on a 7-inch tablet (Quad-core with 2.20 GHz processors, resolution of 1820x1200, refresh rate of 60 Hz):
(1) 180 real characters consist of semantic and phonetic radicals;
(2) 60 pseudo-characters composed by joining semantic and phonetic radicals together;
(3) 60 non-characters composed by joining pseudo-logographemes (composed by adding or deleting one stroke from typical logographemes) together; and
(4) 30 simple line drawings
Results and Discussion
Preliminary results of (1), (2) and (4) revealed that CSC demonstrated mirror-writing in (1) and (2) but not in (4). The results supported that motoric memory stored as clustered strokes representing radicals/logographemes is used in Chinese writing. Data analyses of (3) is still in progress. Theoretical and pedagogical implications will be discussed.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank CSC for contributing in this study. Without her patience, this study would not be possible.
References
Ellis, A. W., & Young, A. W. (2013). Human cognitive neuropsychology: A textbook with readings. Psychology Press.
Han, Z., Zhang, Y., Shu, H., & Bi, Y. (2007). The orthographic buffer in writing Chinese characters: Evidence from a dysgraphic patient. Cognitive neuropsychology, 24(4), 431-450.
Law, S.P. & Leung, M.T. (2000). Structural representations of characters in Chinese writing: Evidence from a case of acquired dysgraphia. Psychologia, 43, 67–83.
Yiu, E.M.L. (1992). Linguistic assessment of Chinese-speaking aphasics: Development of a Cantonese aphasia battery. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 7(4), 379-424.
Keywords:
dysgraphia,
Chinese,
Writing,
mirror-writing,
Lexical Processing
Conference:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.
Presentation Type:
poster presentation
Topic:
Consider for student award
Citation:
Yuen
T and
Lau
D
(2019). The use of radicals as processing units in writing Chinese: evidence from a patient who performed mirror-writing after stroke.
Conference Abstract:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00067
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
21 Apr 2017;
Published Online:
25 Jan 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Dustin Kai-Yan Lau, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Sar, Hong Kong, SAR China, dustin.lau@polyu.edu.hk