Will the Embedded Semantic Radicals Be Activated When Recognizing Chinese Phonograms?

Meng Jiang¹Xueyao Pan^2*Xia Wang¹Qi Luo^1*

• ¹Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China
• ²Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China

A majority of Chinese characters are phonograms composed of phonetic radicals and semantic radicals that are different in functions. The role of radicals in character processing has always been of focal interest to researchers. Great inconsistencies exist over the issue of the embedded semantic radical's semantic activation, and the duration of the possible sub-lexical semantic activation has not been explored in much detail. With a priming character decision task and a between-subjects design, this study examined whether the character semantic radicals embedded in SP phonograms (semantic radicals on the left and phonetic radicals on the right) can have their own semantic information activated automatically and how long can this sub-lexical semantic activation last. The semantic relatedness between semantic radicals embedded in primes and targets, the presentation time of primes in terms of SOAs (stimulus onset asynchronies) as well as the frequency of primes were manipulated. Results showed that the facilitatory effect was observed on targets following low-frequency primes rather than high-frequency primes at SOA 500ms. However, priming effects were absent on targets following either high-frequency or low-frequency primes at either SOA 100ms or SOA 1000ms. These results were interpreted as showing that the sub-lexical semantic activation may occur and remain robust within 500ms, and may vanish before 1000ms. This study provides crucial evidence for the automaticity and time course of embedded semantic radical processing in Chinese phonogram recognition, advancing understanding of sub-lexical semantic processing dynamics in logographic writing systems.