THE EFFECTS OF CHARACTER COMPLEXITY ON RECOGNIZING CHINESE CHARACTERS

This study investigated the effects of varying the complexity of writt en Chinese characters in a lexical decision task. Forty adult Chinese students (20 from Mainland China and 20 from Taiwan) participated in t he study. Subjects responded to individual characters presented by a t achistoscope and classified as simplified legal, complex legal, and il legal. Reaction times and correct responses by nationality were analyz ed using analysis of variance and multiple regression. One result indi cates that the number of strokes in a Chinese character affects reacti on time when subjects identify characters they most often read. This r esult is consistent with well-documented findings that the number of l etters in English words affect processing time. However, another resul t indicates that the fewer number of strokes in simplified characters did not lead to faster reaction times when compared to complex charact ers. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed in term s of how basic perceptual processes may interact with the characterist ics of an orthography to maintain optimal processing speed during read ing. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.