VERY EARLY PHONOLOGICAL ACTIVATION IN CHINESE READING

Is Chinese read by a process that bypasses phonology, or is phonology a part of word identification as it is in alphabetic writing systems? Two experiments provide evidence that phonological information is acti vated as part of Chinese character identification. When participants m ade judgments about the meanings of pairs of characters, their reactio n times and error rates to homophonic foils showed phonological interf erence. Correspondingly, when they made judgments about the pronunciat ion of pairs of characters, they showed semantic interference. The 2nd experiment found phonological interference with only 90 ms stimulus o nset asynchrony and semantic interference at 140 ms. These results are accounted for by a class of models that assume that phonological name s are constituents of word identification in Chinese. The results prov ide support for a universal principle of phonological processes in rea ding.