In readers of English, involved in a rhyme judgement task, mismatch tr
ials are associated with an enhanced N450 component of the Event Relat
ed Potentials (ERPs). It has been suggested that N450 is related to or
thographic or phonological priming. In this paper ERPs were recorded d
uring a phonological matching task, using pairs of logographically dis
similar Chinese characters. A pair was considered to match if they sou
nded alike with identical phoneme sequences. The subjects (native Chin
ese speakers) were instructed to ignore vowel-inflections, which in Ch
inese have lexical status. Since sublexical assembly of phonology is n
ot used in reading Chinese characters, and the members of each pair we
re logographically dissimilar, match and mismatch trials did not suffe
r in the amount of orthographic or sublexical phonological priming. An
enhanced negative component (latency near 400 msec), was observed in
ERPs elicited by the second character in non-matching pairs. The negat
ivity could be similar to N450. If this were so, then N450 could not b
e associated with orthographic priming, nor with sublexical phonology,
but would probably be associated with postlexical processing. Also, i
n both readers of Chinese and English, the negativity enhanced in non-
match trials is larger over the right side of the scalp, suggesting a
similar brain lateralization of the underlying processes.