WHAT ARE THE FUNCTIONAL ORTHOGRAPHIC UNITS IN CHINESE WORD RECOGNITION - THE STROKE OR THE STROKE PATTERN

We present evidence that the visual analysis of Chinese characters by skilled readers is based upon well-defined orthographic constituents. These functional units are the recurrent, integral stroke-patterns, no t the individual strokes as previously thought. The speed of simultane ous ''same-different'' comparisons of Chinese characters is affected b y the number of these orthographic units and, for ''different'' judgem ents, by the proportion of mismatching units, but not by the number of individual strokes. We further define a category of orthographic unit , referred iu here as the ''lexical radical'', which requires strict p ositional regularity within each composite character. Violation of pos itional regularity results in illegal non-characters. In contrast, rec ombination of orthographic units (stroke patterns) with the lexical ra dical in its regular position forms a regular pseudocharacter. We show that real characters are matched faster than pseudocharacters and non -characters-a word superiority effect in Chinese. Pseudocharacters are matched faster than non-characters, a pseudoword advantage in Chinese . We also present evidence suggesting that individual stroke patterns may bf better recognized in real characters than in pseudocharacters a nd non-characters-a word superiority effect in terms of unit recogniti on. These results support the hypothesis that the functional orthograp hic unit in the recognition of Chinese characters, comparable to the l etter in alphabetic word recognition, is the recurring integral stroke pattern.