Abstract
The contribution of orthographic and phonological codes to written production remains controversial. We report results using a picture–word interference task in which participants were asked to write (Experiments 1 and 2) or to speak (Experiment 3) the names of pictures while trying to ignore visual distractors, and the interval between the target and distractor onset was varied. Distractors were orthographically plus phonologically related, orthographically related, phonologically related, or unrelated to picture names. For written production, we found an exclusive orthographic effect at an early stage, reflecting a fast and direct link between meaning and graphemic lexicon, and we demonstrated that orthographic codes can be accessed directly from meaning in healthy adults. We also found orthographic and phonological effects at a later stage, reflecting a slow and indirect link between meaning and graphemic lexicon via phonology. Furthermore, the absence of an interaction effect of orthographic and phonological facilitation on written latencies suggests that the two effects are additive in general and that they might occur independently in written production in Chinese. For spoken production, we found that orthographic and phonological effects occur simultaneously in spoken production and that the two effects are additive at an early stage but interactive at a later stage. The temporal courses and their interplay of orthographic and phonological effects are dissociative in written and spoken production. Our findings thus support the orthography autonomy hypothesis, rather than the obligatory phonological mediation hypothesis, in written production in Chinese (as a non-alphabetic script).
Introduction
Over the past few decades, much research has investigated the processes and mechanisms underlying spoken production (, ; ). However, less work has been devoted to understanding written production. The current views of speech production provide a general theoretical framework from which hypotheses specific to writing can be derived (, ,, ; ; ; ; ; ). In the work reported here, we investigated how orthographic codes are accessed from the conceptual/semantic level in writing using a picture–word interference (PWI) paradigm, which is an experimental paradigm that is popular in speech production (i.e., ; , ,; ).
A central debate in the field is the contributions of orthographic and phonological codes (e.g., ; ; ). Early theoretical accounts claimed that the retrieval of an orthographic representation was entirely dependent on the prior retrieval of phonological codes, which is called the OBLIGATORY phonological mediation hypothesis (; ). This account is compatible with the common introspective speaking experience in writing () and the observation of phonologically mediated spelling errors such as homophone substitutions (e.g., there for their) or quasi-homophone substitutions (e.g., dirth for dearth; ). Evidence in brain-damaged patients and normal writers indicates that spelling errors occur more frequently with inconsistent rather than consistent spelling (i.e., ), reflecting that phonology influences orthographic output. Neuropsychological patients with writing disorders present comparable impairments in spoken and written production (; ), as the phonological mediation hypothesis predicts.
However, neuropsychological studies have demonstrated dissociations between spoken and written production. Studies have repeatedly reported that the ability to spell is often spared even when phonological production is severely damaged (e.g., ; ). reported a patient who, when presented with a picture, sometimes generated different spoken and written responses (e.g., in response to a picture of a cook, the patient would say dish but write forks; see for a similar case study). presented the case of a neurologically impaired individual who was often able to write the names of pictures correctly but was unable to provide the correct spoken names of the pictures (e.g., in response to a picture of tweezers, the patient would say pliers but write needle; see also for details). These findings motivated the “orthographic autonomy hypothesis,” which assumes that individuals can gain access to orthographic representation directly from meaning without phonological mediation ().
This account, however, does not necessarily imply that intact writing is unaffected by phonological codes in unimpaired individuals. Based on proposal, proposed a working model of written picture naming (see Figure 1). When a target picture is presented, the first processing step involves object identification and conceptual preparation in that order. These representations send activation to phonological and orthographic lexicons in parallel, and there are bidirectional connections between two lexicons. The orthographic autonomy hypothesis assumes that semantic activation can directly flow to the orthographic lexicon (by link A in Figure 1). distinguished weak and strong versions of the orthographic autonomy hypothesis. The weak version stipulates that both the orthographic and phonological lexicons are directly activated from the semantic system (by link A and link B in Figure 1, respectively) and map directly onto one another (by link C in Figure 1). By contrast, the strong version does not acknowledge the links between two lexicons and assumes that phonology may influence orthographic output by a sublexical route (link D). model suggests that there are lexical (link C) and sublexical (link D) routes from phonology to orthography in written production.
FIGURE 1
Relatively few empirical studies have addressed the relationship between phonological and orthographic codes with chronometric tasks, and their results have been inconsistent. A few studies demonstrated that phonological codes indeed influence writing (e.g.,
Evidence for phonological constraints largely stems from studies conducted with alphabetic scripts. This finding is perhaps not surprising for writing systems with alphabetic scripts, in which phonological and orthographic codes are closely interrelated and the relationships between phonology and orthography are quasi-systematic. In non-alphabetic scripts, however, it is less obvious why orthographic retrieval should be affected by phonological codes. Because orthography and phonology are largely dissociated in non-alphabetic scripts, such as Chinese, the orthographic and phonological effects can be appropriately separated from one another in such scripts with an appropriate manipulation. With a PWI task,
However, there were two potential problems in
/ying1tao2/, cherry in English; the OP distractor:
/ying1zi/, tassel]. This issue may result in a larger facilitation effect in the OP condition but a smaller facilitation effect in the P condition. Zhao, La Heij and Schiller’s (2012) finding provides evidence for this possibility: a 72-ms phonological facilitation effect at SOA = 0 ms was reduced to 38 ms when phonetic radicals were avoided, reflecting that whether the phonetic radical of a character indicates the pronunciation of the entire character affects the magnitude of the phonological effect.
In the domain of written production, a simple view is proposed on the basis of psycholinguistic and cognitive neuropsychological studies of speech production. Although the spoken and written language production systems may share some processing levels, they also have some specific components (
In the present study, we manipulated the OP related, O related, P related, and unrelated distractor words with target names in a PWI task. The SOA interval between the picture and distractor was also varied. The SOAs of -100 ms (distractor onset before pictures), 0 ms, and +100 ms (distractor onset after pictures) were used (
Concerning the comparison between written and spoken production, according to the obligatory phonological mediation hypothesis, written production depends on spoken production; thus, we would expect phonological activation to arise prior to orthographic activation in speaking and writing. According to the orthographic autonomy hypothesis, written production is not dependent on spoken production, and orthographic information must be activated in writing and prior to or simultaneously with phonological activation because of the connection between phonological and orthographic lexicons.
Experiment 1
Method
Participants
Twenty-four students (11 males, average age 23.0 years, age range 19–28 years) participated in the study and were paid approximately $3. All students were native Mandarin Chinese speakers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
Materials
Fourteen target pictures with monosyllabic names were selected from
(fox, /hu2/) –
(crying sound of child, /gua1/)], (2) a phonologically related (P) but orthographically dissimilar word that shared the syllable but no radical with the picture name [i.e.,
–
(pot, /hu2/)], and (3) an orthographically plus phonologically related word (OP) that shared the phonetic radical and the syllable with the picture name [i.e.,
–
(arc, /hu2/)]. For the phonological overlap in the OP and O distractors, both shared the same syllables with target names. For the orthographic overlap in the OP and O distractors, both shared the same phonetic radicals with targets, which are not the first radicals of the target picture names. Importantly, the phonetic radicals of the OP related and P distractor words cannot indicate the pronunciation of the entire characters, and the potential influence of phonetic radicals is excluded (see also
The distractors in each condition were then recombined with the picture names to form each corresponding unrelated condition. Semantic or associative relationships between the picture names and distractors were avoided in all combinations. Across three distractor type conditions, the distractor words were statistically matched in the number of strokes and lexical frequency based on normative information reported in the database of the Modern Chinese Frequency Dictionary (
Design
The experimental design included Relatedness (related vs. unrelated), Distractor Type (O, P, and OP related), and SOA (-100, 0, and 100 ms) as within-participants and within-items factors. For each participant, each picture was displayed under each relatedness and SOA condition, resulting in 342 combinations. Trials were blocked by SOA, and the order in which the participants encountered the SOA blocks varied according to a Latin square design. A new pseudorandom sequence was generated for each participant and each block, with the constraint that neither the targets nor the distractors were repeated on consecutive trials.
Apparatus
The experiment was performed using E-Prime Professional Software (Version 1.1). The participants were seated in a quiet room ∼70 cm from a 19-inch LED computer screen. Written responses were recorded with a WACOM Intuos A4 graphic tablet with a WACOM inking digitizer pen.
Procedure
The participants were tested individually. They sat in a quiet room at a comfortable viewing distance in front of the computer. The participants were first asked to familiarize themselves with the experimental stimuli by viewing each picture for 3000 ms with the picture name printed below each picture. Then, eight warm-up trials and 114 experimental trials were administered for each SOA block. Each trial involved the following sequence: a fixation point (+) presented in the middle of the screen for 500 ms, followed by a blank screen for 500 ms. Subsequently, the first stimulus (either the distractor or the target) appeared, followed by the appearance of the second stimulus. For SOA = 0 ms, the target and distractor appeared simultaneously.
The distractor words were presented in 25-Song font, centrally superimposed on the target pictures. The pictures were displayed at the bottom of the screen to reduce the participants’ head and eye movements as they wrote the picture names. The participants were asked to write down picture names as quickly and accurately as possible. During the experiment, the participants were instructed to hover the stylus just above the corresponding line on the sheet in anticipation of the response, so that the response would not require an arm movement. An inter-trial interval of 3500 ms concluded each trial. The experiment required ∼40 min in total.
Results
Data from incorrect responses (1.04%) naming latencies longer than 2000 ms or shorter than 300 ms (1.09%) and those deviating by more than 2.5 SD from the cell mean (1.50%) were removed from all analyses. The remaining data were used in the subsequent statistical analysis. Table 1 presents the mean latencies and error percentages for Relatedness, Type of Relatedness, and SOA.
Table 1
| Condition | SOA | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -100 | 0 | +100 | ||||
| RT | PE | RT | PE | RT | PE | |
| OP_R | 957 | 0.60 | 913 | 0.60 | 923 | 1.19 |
| OP_U | 1007 | 1.79 | 961 | 1.19 | 967 | 0.90 |
| Effect | +50∗∗∗ | +48∗∗∗ | +44∗∗∗ | |||
| O_R | 960 | 0.89 | 900 | 1.19 | 936 | 1.19 |
| O_U | 1001 | 0.60 | 933 | 0.89 | 971 | 1.49 |
| Effect | +41∗ | +33∗ | +35∗ | |||
| P_R | 977 | 1.49 | 943 | 0.89 | 946 | 1.19 |
| P_U | 988 | 1.19 | 961 | 1.19 | 972 | 0.30 |
| Effect | +11 | +18 | +26∗ | |||
Mean response latencies (RT in milliseconds) and mean error percentages (PE) in Experiment 1.
∗p < 0.05; ∗∗∗p < 0.001.
OP = orthographically plus phonologically related; O = orthographically related but phonologically unrelated; P = phonologically related but orthographically unrelated; R = Related; U = unrelated.
We used the lmer program of the lme4 package for estimated fixed effects and parameter estimation of the LMM (
The results are reported for the best-fitting models. Latencies and errors were analyzed separately for Relatedness, Distractor Type and SOA. For latencies, the best-fitting model included SOA, Relatedness, Distractor Type, and the interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type. Adding the interaction between SOA and Distractor Type, χ2(4,5824) = 3.53, p = 0.47, the interaction between SOA and Relatedness, χ2(2,5824) = 0.15, p = 0.93, and the interaction among three variables, χ2(4,5824) = 0.72, p = 0.95, did not significantly improve the fit. Table 2 summarizes the fixed effects of the best model fit.
Table 2
| Effects | Estimate | SE | t | Pr(>|t| ) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Intercept) | 958.47 | 35.61 | 26.92 | 0.0000 |
| SOA: 0 ms | -47.51 | 5.69 | -8.35 | 0.0000 |
| SOA: 100 ms | -33.25 | 5.69 | -5.84 | 0.0000 |
| Orthographic relatedness | 8.84 | 8.00 | 1.10 | 0.2696 |
| Phonological relatedness | 27.04 | 8.00 | 3.38 | 0.0007 |
| Unrelated | 52.06 | 8.05 | 6.47 | 0.0000 |
| Unrelated:Orthographically | -25.50 | 11.38 | -2.24 | 0.0251 |
| Unrelated:Phonologically | -33.15 | 11.38 | -2.91 | 0.0036 |
Summary of fixed effects in the linear mixed-effects model for onset latencies in Experiment 1.
We followed the significant interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type with separate contrasts. First, we tested for relatedness effects (i.e., unrelated vs. related) separately for each of three types of relatedness. For the OP condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(639) = 4.27, p < 0.001, 0 ms SOA, t(652) = 3.58, p < 0.001, and +100 ms SOA, t(648) = 4.42, p < 0.001. For the O condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(647) = 2.11, p < 0.05, 0 ms SOA, t(647) = 2.38, p < 0.05, and +100 ms SOA, t(647) = 2.32, p < 0.05. By contrast, for the P condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at 100 ms SOA, t(650) = 2.07, p < 0.05, but not at -100-ms SOA, t(646) = 0.98, p = 0.32, and 0 ms SOA, t(648) = 1.35, p = 0.19.
Finally and most importantly, we assessed the degree of additivity between orthographic and phonological relatedness using a formula (see
OP effect = O effect + P effect
If the effects of orthographic and phonological effects are additive, then the two sides of the equation should be statistically equal; if the effects interact, then the two sides of the equation should deviate from zero. Under the assumption that orthographic and phonological variables do not interact, their respective effects should additively summate. For instance, at SOA = -100 ms, Table 1 shows an orthographic effect of 41 ms (significant) and a phonological effect of 11 ms (insignificant). An additive relationship would predict an effect of 52 ms (41 + 11 ms) for the OP condition. Empirically, the observed OP effect is 50 ms, which is numerically close to the prediction derived from additivity.
We tested this contrast via a coding of [-1, 1, -1, 1, 1, -1] across the orthographically unrelated and related, phonologically related and unrelated, and orthographically plus phonologically unrelated and related cells. This analysis did not return significant results for any of the SOA levels [all Fs(1,23) ≤ 0.78, p ≥ 0.39], suggesting that orthographic and phonological relatedness did not interact at the three SOAs. Bayesian analysis with the method suggested by
A parallel analysis of variance conducted on the errors showed that none of the models that included SOA, Relatedness, Distractor Type, or two-way or three-way interactions improved the fit, χ2 ≤ 2.64, p≥ 0.39.
Discussion
The results showed that the OP related and O related distractors reliably facilitated written production at -100, 0, and +100 ms SOAs, while the P related distractors facilitated written production at +100 ms SOA. Critically, the difference between the OP related effect and the O related effect was not significant at -100 ms SOA. At -100 ms SOA, the magnitude of the OP effect (50 ms) was significantly larger than that of the P effect (11 ms) but was not larger than the magnitude of the O effect (41 ms), reflecting that the OP effect was primarily orthographic, not phonological. Furthermore, the formula analysis indicates that the O effect and the P effect did not interact but rather exerted an additive effect. The present finding shows that phonology is not accessed earlier than orthography in Chinese written production. By contrast,
Experiment 2
Method
Participants
Twenty-four students (10 males, average age 22.2 years, age range 19–26 years) from the same pool participated in the experiment and were paid approximately $6.
Materials
Twenty-five black-and-white pictures with monosyllabic names were selected, including 14 target pictures and 11 fillers. There were five semantic categories (animals, tools, housewares, weapons, and music instruments), and each category consisted of five pictures. We deleted three pictures used in experiment 1 (
cigarette, /yan1/;
, ox, /fu3/, and
peach, /tao2/) because of the phoneme overlap between phonetic radicals and entire character pronunciation, and we added three other target pictures (
pot, /guo1/,
bottle, /ping2/, and
, arrow, /jian4/). Similar to Experiment 1, each target picture was paired with three types of distractor words (OP, O, and P) and then recombined to form corresponding unrelated conditions. Each filler picture was also paired with three unrelated distracter words, and the distractors in each condition were then recombined with the picture names to form other unrelated conditions.
The design, apparatus, procedures, and other aspects of the materials were identical to those used in Experiment 1.
Results
Data for target pictures were analyzed. Incorrect responses and other responses such as “well” or hesitations (0.79%), naming latencies longer than 2000 ms or shorter than 300 ms (1.04%), and those deviating by more than 2.5 SD from the cell means (2.60%) were removed from all analyses. The remaining data were used in the subsequent statistical analysis. Table 3 presents the mean latencies and error percentages for Relatedness, Distractor Type, and SOA.
Table 3
| Condition | SOA | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -100 | 0 | +100 | ||||
| RT | PE | RT | PE | RT | PE | |
| OP_R | 863 | 0 | 850 | 0 | 834 | 0.30 |
| OP_U | 897 | 0.60 | 898 | 0.89 | 873 | 0.60 |
| Effect | +34∗∗∗ | +48∗∗∗ | +39∗∗∗ | |||
| O_R | 870 | 0 | 864 | 0 | 836 | 0.60 |
| O_U | 896 | 0.89 | 893 | 0.60 | 874 | 0.60 |
| Effect | +26∗ | +29∗∗∗ | +38∗∗∗ | |||
| P_R | 875 | 0 | 860 | 0 | 868 | 0.60 |
| P_U | 886 | 0.89 | 881 | 0.30 | 877 | 0.60 |
| Effect | +11 | +21ł | +9 | |||
Mean response latencies (RT in milliseconds) and mean error percentages (PE) in Experiment 2 (∗p < 0.05; łp < 0.10; ∗∗∗p < 0.001).
The results are reported for the best-fitting models. Latencies and errors were analyzed separately for Relatedness, Distractor Type, and SOA. For latencies, the best-fitting model included SOA, Relatedness, and the interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type. Adding Distractor Type, χ2(2,5775) = 1.78, p = 0.40, the interaction between SOA and Distractor Type, χ2(4,5775) = 5.35, p = 0.25, the interaction between SOA and Relatedness, χ2(2,5775) = 1.81, p = 0.40, and the interaction among three variables, χ2(4,5775) = 0.22, p = 0.99, did not significantly improve the fit. Table 4 summarizes the fixed effects of the best-fitting model.
Table 4
| Effects | Estimate | SE | t | Pr(>|t| ) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Intercept) | 862.74 | 35.15 | 24.54 | 0.0000 |
| SOA: 0 ms | -3.80 | 4.56 | -0.83 | 0.4048 |
| SOA: 100 ms | -15.37 | 4.57 | -3.37 | 0.0008 |
| Unrelated | 42.58 | 6.45 | 6.60 | 0.0000 |
| Unrelated:Orthographically | -0.03 | 6.49 | -0.01 | 0.1788 |
| Unrelated:Phonologically | -8.51 | 6.47 | -1.32 | 0.9960 |
| Related:Orthographically | 8.64 | 6.43 | 1.35 | 0.0022 |
| Related:Phonologically | 19.74 | 6.43 | 3.07 | 0.1881 |
Summary of fixed effects in the linear mixed-effects model for onset latencies in Experiment 2.
A follow-up analysis similar to that used in Experiment 1 was conducted. For the OP condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(653) = 3.75, p < .001, 0 ms SOA, t(640) = 4.34, p < 0.001, and +100 ms SOA, t(634) = 4.51, p < 0.001. For the O condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(647) = 2.34, p < 0.05, 0 ms SOA, t(639) = 3.65, p < 0.001, and +100 ms SOA, t(633) = 3.92, p < 0.001. For the P condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness did not differ significantly from one another at 0 ms SOA, t(642) = 0.98, p = 0.33, 0 ms SOA, t(644) = 1.70, p = 0.09, and +100 ms SOA, t(643) = 1.30, p = 0.19.
We again tested the contrasting effects via a coding of [-1, 1, -1, 1, 1, -1] across the orthographically unrelated and related, phonologically related and unrelated, and orthographically plus phonologically unrelated and related cells. This analysis did not return significant results for any SOA levels [all Fs(1,23) ≤ 0.12, p ≥ 0.49], suggesting that orthographic and phonological relatedness did not interact. Bayesian analysis as performed in Experiment 1 resulted in a Bayes factor of 4.52 with pBIC(H0|D) = 0.82 and pBIC(H1|D) = 0.18 at -100-ms SOA, of 4.10 with pBIC(H0|D) = 0.80 and pBIC(H1|D) = 0.20 at 0-ms SOA, and of 3.76 with pBIC(H0|D) = 0.79 and pBIC(H1|D) = 0.21 at +100-ms SOA, which constitutes “positive” evidence for the null hypothesis of additive effects of orthographic and phonological relatedness (
A parallel analysis of variance conducted on the errors showed that none of the models that included SOA, Relatedness, Distractor Type, or two-way or three-way interactions improved the fit, χ2 ≤ 4.47, p≥ 0.11.
Discussion
The results showed that the OP related and O related distractors reliably facilitated written production at -100, 0, and +100 ms SOAs, and these findings replicated the results of Experiment 1, while the P related distractors produced a marginally significant facilitation effect at 0 ms SOA. As in the first experiment, the difference between the OP related effect and the O related effect was not significant, whereas the difference between the OP effect and the P effect was significant, indicating that the OP effect was primarily orthographic, not phonological. Statistical tests on this formula also indicated that orthographic relatedness and phonological relatedness did not interact, which is perfectly consistent with the findings in Experiment 1. Experiments 1 and 2 hence provide converging evidence for an additive pattern of orthographic and phonological relatedness and indicate that phonology is not accessed earlier than orthography in Chinese written production.
There were some important divergences in Experiments 1 and 2. The magnitude of the OP effect and the O effect were comparable in both experiments. By contrast, there were significant phonological effects (26 ms) at +100 ms in Experiment 1 versus a marginally significant effect (21 ms) at 0 ms in Experiment 2. The absence of the P effect may result from the relatively larger picture sets: there were 14 target pictures in the first experiment and 25 in the second experiment. In both experiments, each target picture was presented and named 18 times by each participant, which is a common manipulation in studies using the PWI paradigm. The classic semantic interference and form-related facilitation cannot be eliminated by repetition in spoken responses, so it is usually acceptable in studies and not perceived as problematic. However,
Experiment 3
In the literature, cognitive neuropsychological studies have reported an experimental dissociation in writing and speaking (
Method
Participants
Six months after Experiment 1 was conducted, the same 22 participants in Experiment 1 returned and participated in Experiment 3, and they reported that they had little memory of Experiment 1. Two more participants were recruited from the same pool of participants. All participants were paid approximately $4.
The materials, design, apparatus, and procedure were identical to those used in Experiment 1, except that the participants were asked to name the target aloud as quickly and accurately as possible, and naming latencies were measured from target onset using a voice-key connected with the computer via a PST Serial Response Box. The inter-trial interval was 1500 ms, and the experiment took ∼30 min in total.
Results
Data from incorrect responses (1.49%), naming latencies longer than 1500 ms or shorter than 200 ms (1.39%), and those deviating by more than 2.5 SD from the cell mean (2.96%) were removed from all analyses. The remaining data were used in the subsequent statistical analysis. Table 5 presents the mean latencies and error percentages for Relatedness, Distractor Type, and SOA.
Table 5
| Condition | SOA | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -100 | 0 | +100 | ||||
| RT | PE | RT | PE | RT | PE | |
| OP_R | 622 | 0.60 | 601 | 0 | 629 | 1.19 |
| OP_U | 695 | 0.89 | 698 | 1.79 | 681 | 2.38 |
| Effect | +73∗∗∗∗ | +97∗∗∗∗ | +52∗∗∗∗ | |||
| O_R | 643 | 0.30 | 613 | 0.89 | 632 | 0.89 |
| O_U | 695 | 0.60 | 680 | 0.19 | 667 | 0.89 |
| Effect | +52∗∗∗∗ | +67∗∗∗∗ | +35∗∗∗∗ | |||
| P_R | 650 | 0.30 | 631 | 0.60 | 630 | 0.30 |
| P_U | 678 | 1.79 | 685 | 2.38 | 680 | 2.38 |
| Effect | +28∗∗∗∗ | +54∗∗∗∗ | +50∗∗∗∗ | |||
The mean latencies and error percentages for Relatedness, Distractor Type, and SOA in Experiment 3.
∗∗∗∗p < .0001.
The results are reported for the best-fitting models. Latencies and errors were analyzed separately. For latencies, the best-fitting model included SOA, Relatedness, the interaction between SOA and Distractor Type, the interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type, the interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type, and the three-way interaction. Adding Distractor Type did not significantly improve the fit, the interaction between SOA and Distractor Type, χ2(2,5720) = 2.88, p = 0.24. Table 6 summarizes the fixed effects of the best-fitting model fit.
Table 6
| Effects | Estimate | SE | t | Pr(>|t| ) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Intercept) | 700.15 | 18.84 | 37.15 | 0.0000 |
| SOA2 | 2.97 | 7.59 | 0.39 | 0.6959 |
| SOA3 | -10.946 | 7.62 | -1.44 | 0.1508 |
| related2 | -75.28 | 7.502 | -10.04 | 0.0000 |
| SOA1:type2 | -0.408 | 7.55 | -0.05 | 0.9572 |
| SOA2:type2 | -20.97 | 7.61 | -2.75 | 0.0060 |
| SOA3:type2 | -20.218 | 7.57 | -2.67 | 0.0076 |
| SOA1:type3 | -17.06 | 7.62 | -2.24 | 0.0251 |
| SOA2:type3 | -12.74 | 7.61 | -1.67 | 0.0944 |
| SOA3:type3 | -4.364 | 7.63 | -0.57 | 0.5673 |
| SOA2:related2 | -25.85 | 10.60 | -2.44 | 0.0148 |
| SOA3:related2 | 17.82 | 10.66 | 1.67 | 0.0946 |
| related2:type2 | 21.40 | 10.60 | 2.02 | 0.0434 |
| related2:type3 | 44.39 | 10.64 | 4.17 | 0.0000 |
| SOA2:related2:type2 | 11.41 | 15.00 | 0.76 | 0.4468 |
| SOA3:related2:type2 | 2.55 | 15.01 | 0.17 | 0.8650 |
| SOA2:related2:type3 | -0.48 | 15.03 | -0.03 | 0.9745 |
| SOA3:related2:type3 | -39.12 | 15.07 | -2.60 | 0.0095 |
Summary of fixed effects in the linear mixed-effects model for onset latencies in Experiment 3.
SOA1: -100 ms; SOA2: 0 ms; SOA 3: 100 ms; type2: orthographic relatedness; type3: phonological relatedness; related2: unrelated.
An analysis similar to that performed in Experiment 1 was conducted. For the OP condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(638) = 10.34, p < 0.0001, 0 ms SOA, t(641) = 13.98, p < 0.0001, and +100 ms SOA, t(626) = 7.10, p < 0.0001. For the O condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(641) = 7.32, p < 0.0001, 0 ms SOA, t(633) = 9.02, p < 0.0001, and +100 ms SOA, t(643) = 4.95, p < 0.0001. For the P condition, the results showed that the effects of relatedness differed significantly from one another at -100 ms SOA, t(632) = 4.42, p < 0.0001, 0 ms SOA, t(632) = 7.67, p < 0.0001 and +100 ms SOA, t(634) = 6.93, p < 0.0001.
We again tested the contrasting effects via a coding of [-1, 1, -1, 1, 1, -1] across the orthographically unrelated and related, phonologically related and unrelated, and orthographically plus phonological unrelated and related cells. This analysis did not return significant results at -100 ms SOA, F(1,23) = 0.900, p = 0.353, but they were significant at 0 ms SOA, F(1,23) = 4.611, p = 0.043 and marginally significant at 100 ms SOA, F(1,23) = 3.374, p = 0.079, suggesting that orthographic and phonological relatedness did not interact at an earlier stage but did interact at a later stage. Bayesian analysis as conducted in Experiment 1 resulted in a Bayes factor of 3.09 with pBIC(H0|D) = 0.76 and pBIC(H1|D) = 0.24 at -100 ms SOA, which constitutes “positive” evidence for the null hypothesis of additive orthographic and phonological effects according to
A parallel analysis of variance was conducted on the errors, but binomial data were used. The best-fitting model included Relatedness and the interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type. Adding SOA, Distractor Type, the interaction between SOA and Distractor Type, the interaction between SOA and Relatedness, and the three-way interaction among three variables did not improve the fit, χ2 ≤ 3.07, p≥ 0.31. A planned comparison showed a significant difference in the error rate in the P condition, -100 ms, z = 1.81, p = 0.07; 0 ms, z = 2.23, p = 0.03; 100 ms, z = 0.69, p = 0.49. Other comparisons were not significant, zs ≤ 1.55, p≥ 0.12.
Combination Analysis of Written and Spoken Production
A total of 22 individuals participated in both Experiments 1 and 3; thus, we performed a combination analysis for onset latencies in writing and speaking. A factor of output modality (written and spoken production) was added to the previous model (SOA, Distractor Type, and Relatedness). The best-fitting model included SOA; Relatedness; Modality; the interaction between SOA and modality; the interaction between relatedness and modality; and the three-way interaction among Distractor Type, Relatedness, and Modality. The model fit did not significantly improve by adding Distractor Type, χ2(2,10487) = 2.61, p = 0.27; the interaction between SOA and Distractor Type, χ2(4,10487) = 2.93, p = 0.57; the interaction between SOA and Relatedness, χ2(2,10487) = 3.52, p = 0.17; the interaction between Relatedness and Distractor Type, χ2(2,10487) = 0.44, p = 0.80; the interaction between Distractor Type and Modality, χ2(2,10487) = 0.56, p = 0.76; the triple interaction among SOA, Distractor Type and Relatedness, χ2(4,10487) = 1.77, p = 0.78; the triple interaction among SOA, Distractor Type and Modality, χ2(4, 10487) = 1.90, p = 0.75; the triple interaction among SOA, Relatedness and Modality, χ2(2,10487) = 2.87, p = 0.24; and the 4-way interaction among four factors, χ2(4,10487) = 2.86, p = 0.58.
Discussion
The results showed that the OP related, O related and P related distractors reliably facilitated spoken production at -100, 0, and +100 ms SOAs. The striking findings were that the P effect occurred simultaneously with the O effect (see
General Discussion
In an adaptation of the PWI task, we investigated the temporal courses of orthographic and phonological activation in spoken and written production and addressed the contribution of orthography and phonology to written production. The results showed that the OP related and O related distractors reliably facilitated written and spoken production at -100, 0, and +100 ms SOAs. Critically, the P related effect was significant at a later stage of written production, and the difference between the OP and O conditions was not significant at -100 ms SOA in written production. By contrast, the P related effect was significant at an earlier stage and persisted in the later stage of spoken production. Based on the assumption that the manipulation of SOA in PWI studies allows insight into the picture-naming and picture-writing process as it unfolds over time (
The present findings on written production are not consistent with the conclusions for English and Chinese within the PWI paradigm. In previous studies,
As summarized in the introduction, the evidence with regard to whether handwriting is constrained by phonological codes was from healthy individuals (
However, findings on the role of phonology in written production have not been consistent for alphabetic languages (
The different temporal patterns and interaction of orthographic and phonological effects in written and spoken production suggest that the output modality may influence the interplay of orthography and phonology in language production. Orthographic and phonological effects are additive in general, and both effects can occur independently in written production. By contrast, the two effects are additive at an earlier stage but interact at a later stage of spoken production (see
In parallel to the issue of a phonological role in written production, an issue in spoken production is the role of orthography. Recent findings further suggest that orthography plays a role only when it is relevant to a spoken word production task (
What are the implications of our findings for written production? The written model proposed by
Conclusion
We found an orthographic effect at an early stage in written production, reflecting a fast and direct link between meaning and graphemic lexicon, and we demonstrated that orthographic codes can be accessed directly from meaning in healthy adults. We also found orthographic and phonological effects at a later stage, reflecting a slow and indirect link between meaning and graphemic lexicon via phonology. Furthermore, the absence of an interaction effect of orthographic and phonological facilitation on written latencies suggests that the two effects are additive in general but that they might occur independently in written production in Chinese. Concerning the process of spoken production, we found that orthographic and phonological effects occur simultaneously and that both effects are additive at an early stage but interactive at a later stage. The temporal courses and their interplay of orthographic and phonological effects are dissociative in written and spoken production. Our findings support the orthography autonomy hypothesis, rather than obligatory phonological mediation hypothesis, for written production.
Statements
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170977, 31471074), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China (No. 14NXLF12) to QZ.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
written production, spoken production, orthography, phonology, orthographic autonomy hypothesis
Citation
Zhang Q and Wang C (2015) Phonology is not accessed earlier than orthography in Chinese written production: evidence for the orthography autonomy hypothesis. Front. Psychol. 6:448. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00448
Received
11 December 2014
Accepted
30 March 2015
Published
17 April 2015
Volume
6 - 2015
Edited by
Albert Costa, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Reviewed by
Patrick Bonin, University of Bourgogne and Institut Universitaire de France, France; Kalinka Timmer, Leiden University, Netherlands
Copyright
© 2015 Zhang and Wang.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Qingfang Zhang, Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100872, China qingfang.zhang@ruc.edu.cn
This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
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