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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Oct 2.
Published in final edited form as: Lang Cogn Neurosci. 2019 Feb 12;34(6):736–746. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1578891

Reading Pinyin activates sublexcial character orthography for skilled Chinese readers

Lin Chen a,*, Charles A Perfetti a,*, Xiaoping Fang a, Li-Yun Chang b, Scott Fraundorf a
PMCID: PMC7531182  NIHMSID: NIHMS1538658  PMID: 33015216

Abstract

How do skilled Chinese readers, accustomed to characters, process Pinyin, a phonemic transcription of Chinese? Does the orthography of Chinese characters become activated? In four experiments, native speakers first made a meaning judgment on a two-syllable word written in Pinyin. Immediately following, they responded to a character whose orthography sometimes was related to the character corresponding to the Pinyin. In Experiments 1 and 3, participant named the color of the presented characters; there was an interference effect when the presented characters included phonetic radicals that were part of the character corresponding to the Pinyin. In Experiments 2 and 4, participants named the character; naming times were affected if either the semantic or phonetic radical was shared with the character corresponding to the Pinyin. The results indicate that access to lexical representations in Chinese is centered on the orthographic character, even when the input is Pinyin.

Keywords: Pinyin reading, character, orthography, phonology, semantics


All writing systems establish links between their orthographic forms and the phonological and meaning units of their language. However, writing systems vary in how (and at what level) their orthographies produce activation of phonological and semantic information. In alphabetic languages, the orthography to phonology link is established most strongly at the phoneme level. Because Chinese characters do not correspond to phonemes but to meaning-bearing morpheme-syllables, they allow strong connections to meaning, while also producing automatic activation of syllabic level phonology (Perfetti & Tan, 1998; Perfetti & Zhang, 1991; Zhou & Marslen-Wilson, 1999, 2000).

If skilled Chinese readers develop strong orthography to meaning connections in character reading, what happens when they read alphabetic Pinyin? In China, Pinyin is used in beginning reading to establish a connection between printed and spoken language and to support learning the pronunciation of characters and in learning to read Chinese as a foreign language. Pinyin reading by adults provides an interesting test of how reading experience affects orthographic pathways to meaning during skilled reading. One possibility is that, for an adult reader, Pinyin functions mainly as a path to pronunciation and, through the spoken language, provides a link to meaning. However, because the character is the skilled reader’s primary orthography, there is an alternative possibility: The character has become the gateway to meaning, while also activating phonology (Perfetti, Liu, & Tan, 2005; Perfetti & Tan, 1998; Perfetti & Zhang, 1991). Thus, it may function as an orthographic mediator of meaning access, even when the reader encounters Pinyin. On this possibility, with increasing experience with characters and low use of Pinyin, reading Pinyin comes to activate Chinese orthography, i.e. the character that corresponds to the word written in Pinyin. In an extension of the usual formulation of an indirect path to meaning in alphabetic reading—the alphabetic string to pronunciation to meaning—the Chinese skilled reader’s indirect pathway could become alphabetic string to pronunciation to character to meaning.

Recent studies have provided some evidence for the orthographic activation in Pinyin reading (Chen, Perfetti, & Leng, 2017; Chen, Zhong, Leng & Mo, 2014). Using a color judgment task, these studies presented a two-syllable word written in Pinyin (e.g., bēi zi, meaning ‘cup’; characters corresponding to the Pinyin word: 杯子) that required participants to make a semantic judgment (deciding whether the word referred to a man-made object). Following their response, participants were shown a target character (怀) and required to judge the color of that character. The colors and characters were unrelated in meaning, pronunciation and orthography. Responses in the color judgment task were slowed when the colored character (怀) was orthographically related to the character that corresponds to the Pinyin word (杯). This interference effect, which was found for both native Chinese readers (Chen et al., 2014) and highly experienced learners of Chinese (Chen et al., 2017), implies that when Pinyin is read for meaning, activation of the character form draws attention resources away from color processing (MacLeod, 1991).

These studies provide evidence that reading Pinyin activates the character corresponding to the Pinyin. However, normal character recognition includes use of sublexical character components that give clues to pronunciation and meaning (Chen & Weekes, 2004; Ding, Peng, & Taft, 2004; Feldman & Siok, 1999; Lee, Tsai, Chiu, Tzeng, & Hung, 2006; Lee, Tsai, Huang, Hung, & Tzeng, 2006; Su & Weekes, 2007; Tsang & Chen, 2009; Tsang, Wu, Ng, & Chen, 2017; Zhou, Peng, Zheng, Su & Wang, 2013). The role of these sublexical components in the character mediation effect is our focus here.

Eighty-one percent Chinese characters are compound characters consisting of phonetic and semantic radicals (Chen, Allport, & Marshall, 1996), which can be activated early in character reading. Important for our experiments are the facts that the semantic radical does not always provide a valid cue to the meaning of the character and the phonetic radical does not always provide the pronunciation the character. If the orthographic structure of an activated character is involved in reading Pinyin, we should see evidence for this by manipulating components of the target character in the color judgment task. More broadly, varying both the phonetic and semantic radicals allows us examine the activation of sublexical constituents (orthographic, phonological, and semantic) of character during Pinyin reading.

The experiments we report here test the role of orthographic structure and radical function in two tasks that participants perform when they see the target character. One task requires a silent color judgment response and the other requires naming the character. We manipulate the subcomponent (radical) information of the target character in relation to the character corresponding to the Pinyin presented in the Pinyin reading task. In Experiments 1 and 2, the manipulation centers on the phonetic radical, which could be shared between the Pinyin character and the target character, designated as O+ for shared radical. The shared radical could be a valid cue to the character’s pronunciation (P+) or could be an invalid cue to the character’s pronunciation (P-). Thus, the target character and the character corresponding to the Pinyin word varied in their conditions of radical sharing: They (a) share a phonetic radical that is a valid cue to phonology (O+P+), creating identical pronunciations between the implicit Pinyin character and the explicitly presented target character (for example, 珠 and蛛 have same pronunciation “zhū” as their shared phonetic radical “朱” , whose pronunciation is also “zhū”); (b) share a phonetic radical that is an invalid cue to one of the characters, thus sharing a radical without the characters being phonetically related (O+P-, for example, 柱 and 往 share the same phonetic radical “主” (pronunciation of the radical is zhǔ), but have different pronunciation “zhù” and “wǎnɡ”); or (c) share neither a phonetic radical nor phonology, serving as a baseline (O-P-, for example,胡 and鸥 do not share phonetic radical and have different pronunciation “hú” and “ōu”).

Experiment 1 required a judgment of the target character’s color, involving the identity of the character only implicitly; Experiment 2 required the explicit naming of the target character. The color judgment task allows us to make a direct comparison with previous studies using the same task, which found an orthographic activation on character level (Chen et al., 2014; 2017). Including the naming task allows a test of whether orthographic activation during Pinyin reading can be detected by tasks that have different word processing requirements—one (character naming) that requires explicitly orthographic and phonological processing, compared with one (color judgment) that does not require explicit orthographic processing.

If the phonetic radical is activated during Pinyin processing as a strictly orthographic object (i.e. without phonology), the color judgment or character naming latency of target character in O+P+ and O+P- conditions should be comparable, both producing interference relative to the baseline condition. The assumption is that in the color judgment task, the orthographic activation of the character attracts attention from color naming, thus increasing latency (MacLeod, 1991). In the character naming task, competition from similar orthography produces inhibition during character identification (Perfetti, Liu, & Tan, 2005).

If the phonetic radical’s functional value is also activated as part of the character that is activated during Pinyin processing, then the color judgment task and the character naming task would generate different predictions. In the color judgment task, the increased target character activation from sharing same phonetic radical value should produce an increase in color judgment latency (Klein, 1964; Warren, 1974). Color judgment latency in the O+P+ condition should be longer than the O+P- condition, and the O+P- condition should be longer than the O-P- condition. In the naming task, the shared phonetic radical value in the O+P+ condition would reduce the interference from the orthographic similarity in the O+P- condition and produce shorter character naming latency.

In Experiments 3 and 4, we manipulated the semantic radical through three conditions analogous to those for the phonetic radical in Experiments 1 and 2: the target character and the character corresponding to the Pinyin word (a) share a semantic radical that is a valid cue to meaning, creating related meanings between the two characters (O+S+, for example, 沙and 海share the same semantic radical氵[meaning is related to water] and meaning related, meaning of the characters are “sand” and “sea”, respectively); (b) share a semantic radical that is an invalid cue to one of the characters, creating different meanings between the two characters (O+S-, for example, 镜 and 镇 share the same semantic radical钅[meaning is related to metal] but the meaning of the characters are different, “mirror” and “town”, respectively); (c) share neither a radical nor a meaning (O-S-, for example, 椅 and 钢 shared neither a semantic radical nor meaning: chair-steel).

Experiment 1

Method

Participants.

Thirty-two Chinese graduate students (average age 24.6, SD=2.4) from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University were paid for their participation in the experiment. There were 10 males and 22 females. All participants were Chinese native speakers and familiar with Pinyin, which they had learned in the first grade of elementary school. All had completed their college study in China before graduate study in the US and were bilingual in Chinese and English.

Stimuli and design.

The stimuli included 60 pairs of words (in Pinyin form) and characters. Most Chinese syllables (which are mapped to characters) are homophones; any individual syllable generally corresponds to several different characters. To avoid ambiguity, the Pinyin words in current study had two syllables, thus corresponding to two characters, and did not share pronunciation with any other Chinese words. Thus, each Pinyin word was unique, associated with only one two-character word. For example, the Pinyin “bēi zi” corresponds exclusively to the two-character word “杯子”. All the two-character words had a postfix zi (子), which indicates the word is a noun, as their second character. This manipulation promotes focus on the first character, which was used to manipulate the relations between the implicit character associated with the Pinyin and the character presented for color naming and minimizes interference from activation of the second character.

Table 1 provides examples of the three conditions: In O+P+ condition, the first character corresponding to the first syllable written in Pinyin (珠, pronunciation, zhū) shared a phonetic radical (朱, pronunciation, zhū) and had the same pronunciation as the color-target character (蛛) (pronunciation, also zhū)1. In the O+P- condition, the first character corresponding to the first syllable of the Pinyin word (柱, pronunciation is zhù) shared the same phonetic radical (主, pronunciation is zhǔ) with the target character (往) (pronunciation is wǎnɡ) but with different character pronunciation. In O-P- condition, the first character of the Pinyin word and the target character shared neither radicals (胡-鸥) nor pronunciation (pronunciation is hú and ōu, repetitively). There were 20 pairs of stimuli in each condition. All stimuli are listed in Appendix A table A1A3.

Table 1.

Example stimuli of each condition in Experiment 1

Condition Pinyin Word Target Character
O+P+ zhū zi (Pinyin) meaning: bead 子(corresponding characters of Pinyin) (Pinyin: zhū) (meaning: spider)
O+P− dù zi (Pinyin) meaning: belly 子(corresponding characters of Pinyin) (Pinyin: shè) (meaning: agency)
O−P− (baseline condition) hú zi (Pinyin) meaning: beard 子(corresponding characters of Pinyin) (Pinyin: ōu) (meaning: gull)

Word frequency and character frequency were based on the frequency dictionary of Cai and Brysbaert (2010). Means and standard deviations of these properties are presented in Appendix C, Table C1. Neither the word frequency nor stroke number of the corresponding word for the Pinyin word were significantly different across conditions, Fs<1. The conditions did not significantly differ in target character frequency, F<1, or stroke number for the target character, F<1.

Procedure.

Participants were tested individually in a quiet experimental lab, seated approximately 50 cm from a computer screen. On each trial, a fixation signal (a black “+”) was first presented at the center of the computer screen for 500ms, followed by the appearance of a Pinyin word. Each Pinyin word was displayed approximately 5cm wide × 2cm high. For the Pinyin word, participants performed a semantic judgment by pressing a designated button on keyboard only when the Pinyin word referred to a person (such as hái zi ‘kid’ or zhí zi ‘nephew’) and making no response to all other Pinyin words. 20 of the 100 words referred to a person, and thus required a response within 1500ms, after which the word disappeared. The remaining 80 no-response trials included the 60 critical trials (20 for each condition) and 20 fillers, in which the target character and the character corresponding to the Pinyin word did not share a radical, a pronunciation or a meaning. The colored target character was then presented, and participants had 2000ms to respond by making a keyboard response whether the color was blue or red. A 1000ms blank followed each trial. Participants were instructed to respond as quickly and accurately as possible, and they received four practice trials.

The target results were the reaction times in color judgment trials on critical trials, all of which followed no-response Pinyin words (i.e., those that did not refer to people).

Results and Discussion

Only trials that produced accurate responses for both semantic judgment and color judgment were included in the analysis of color judgment decision times. Data from three participants were excluded because they did not reach the accuracy criterion of 90% color judgment accuracy. This criterion was informed by the results of Tanenhaus et al. (1980), who reported that colors could be named at a high average accuracy of 98.7%, so accuracy below 90% is likely to reflect a misunderstanding of the task.

The decisions times for the color judgment of target characters are shown in Table 2, along with results from the semantic judgment task for Pinyin words. The key evidence for an orthographic effect is the comparison of the O+P- condition with the O-P- baseline condition. Planned pairwise comparisons showed that color judgment latencies in the O+P- condition were longer than in the O-P- condition, thus demonstrating interference from the shared radical and suggesting that the phonetic radical was activated during Pinyin processing. Color judgment responses of O+P+ condition did not differ from the O-P- condition or the O+P- condition. This intermediate status of O+P+ makes the role of phonology difficult to assess. Thus, there is evidence for radical-produced interference when the pronunciations were not the same across characters, while same pronunciations produced an unclear effect, with means more similar to O+P- than to O-P-. The statistical tests described below are consistent with this description of the pattern of results.

Table 2.

Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of semantic judgment accuracy, color judgment accuracy and reaction time (ms) in Experiment 1 and semantic judgment accuracy, naming accuracy and reaction time (ms) in Experiment 2.

Conditions Experiment 1 Experiment 2
Semantic judgment Color judgment Semantic judgment Naming
Accuracy Accuracy RTs Accuracy Accuracy RTs
O+P+ .98 (.04) .96 (.05) 711 (150) .95 (.07) .97(.06) 671 (93)
O+P− .97 (.04) .97 (.04) 724 (152) .94 (.07) .98(.04) 772 (126)
O−P− .99 (.02) .97 (.04) 686 (119) .97 (.04) .98(.05) 666 (116)

We analyzed the data using mixed-effects modeling (Baayen, Davidson, & Bates, 2008) with color judgment RTs as the dependent variable. The models were implemented in the lme4 and lmerTest packages in R (Bates, Maechler, Bolker, & Walker, 2015; Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2017). The base model included the variable we manipulated—Condition—as the fixed effect and intercepts for participants and items as random effects. Model comparisons using the likelihood-ratio test determined whether the final model included the random participant slope or random item slope for the manipulated variable. The final model had Condition as a fixed factor, and random intercepts for participant and item and a by-participant slope for Condition as random effects.

To determine whether there was a main effect of Condition, we compared a full model with Condition as a fixed effect against a reduced model without Condition. The two models showed a difference, although not at the standard level of significance, χ2=4.47, p=.11. Planned pairwise comparisons were carried out in the final model to test the condition effects. The planned pairwise comparisons showed that the O+P- condition produced longer RTs than the O-P- condition, estimate=38.92 ms, SE=18.12, t=2.15, p=.036. The O+P+ and O-P- conditions did not differ significantly, estimate=23.66 ms, SE=17.91, t=1.32, p=.19, nor did the O+P+ condition significantly differ from the O+P- condition, estimate=−15.26 ms, SE=16.88, t=−0.9, p=.37. Appendix D presents the details of the model.

Neither Pinyin semantic judgment accuracy nor target color judgment accuracy showed a Condition effect, χ2=1.61, p=0.45; χ2=1.53, p=.46, respectively. The final logistic models for Pinyin semantic judgment accuracy and color judgment accuracy had Condition as a fixed factor, and participant and item intercepts as random effects.

In summary, Experiment 1 found that when the implicit character and the explicitly presented characters shared phonetic radicals, interference emerged, suggesting that the phonetic radical has been activated in Pinyin reading. An effect of the phonological value of the phonetic radical was not detected in the color judgment task based on the non-significant difference between the O+P+ and O+P- conditions. Experiment 2, which employed the explicit naming task, may provide a more sensitive test for this phonological effect.

Experiment 2

Method

Participants.

Twenty-four Chinese undergraduates (10 males, 14 females; average age 20.4, SD=1.18) from South China Normal University were paid for their participation in the experiment. All participants were familiar with Pinyin, which they had learned from first grade of elementary school. All were bilingual in English.

Stimuli, design and procedure.

The stimuli and design were the same as in Experiment 1: the shared properties of a phonetic radical were manipulated. The procedure was adopted from Experiment 1, with the major change that participants were asked to name the target character instead of making a color judgment. A microphone recorded participants’ oral response.

Results

Semantic judgment accuracies of Pinyin words and naming accuracies and latencies of target characters across the three conditions are in Table 2. Only trials that produced accurate responses for both semantic judgment and character naming were included in the analysis of naming times. The naming latency of O+P- condition was longer than O-P- condition. The O+P+ condition was not different from the O-P- baseline and produced shorter naming latencies than the O+P- condition. The results indicate that the presence of a shared phonetic radical produced interference when the character pronunciations were not shared. This further suggests that the phonetic radical and its phonological value were accessed during Pinyin reading. The statistics that support these conclusions are reported below.

Naming times for target characters differed among the three conditions, χ2=19.35, p<.001. Planned pairwise comparisons in the final model showed that character naming latency in the O+P- condition was longer than the baseline condition, estimate=107.7 ms, SE=24.96, t=4.32, p<.001. O+P+ naming latencies did not differ from the baseline, estimate=8.5 ms, SE=24.97, t=0.34, p=.74, and were shorter than in the O+P- condition, estimate=−99.2 ms, SE=25.03, t=−3.96, p<.001. Neither semantic judgment accuracy of the Pinyin word nor character naming accuracy differed across three conditions, χ2=2.62, p=.27; χ2=0.66, p=.72. The final models for naming accuracy, naming RTs and semantic judgment accuracy had Condition as a fixed factor, and participant and item intercepts as random effects.

Consistent with Experiment 1, Experiment 2 confirmed that the phonetic radical and its phonological value were both activated during Pinyin reading. Interference emerged if the characters shared phonetic radical but had different pronunciations. The interference disappeared when the phonetic radical was congruent with the character pronunciation. One thing to note is that the students residing in China (Experiment 2) would have more recent use of characters than the Chinese students who had come to the U.S. (Experiment 1). However, the key finding is that phonetic radical is activated across these two different populations regardless of the character experience.

Experiment 3

Experiment 3 used the color judgment task to test whether the activation of the semantic radical of an implicit character occurs during Pinyin reading. We manipulate the implicit and explicit target characters so that a shared semantic radical can be identical in meaning (O+S+) or unrelated in meaning (O+S-), analogous to the possibilities for a phonetic radical.

Method

Participants.

Thirty-two Chinese graduate students (18 females, 14 males) with an average age of 25.2 (SD=3.1) from the same university population as Experiment 1 participated in the experiment. None had been in the earlier experiment.

Stimuli, design and procedure.

Three conditions presented three types of relations between the first of two characters that correspond to the presented Pinyin word and the color target character: (a) shared semantic radical with related meanings (O+S+); (b) shared semantic radical with different meanings (O+S-); (c) neither shared semantic radical nor shared character meaning (O-S-).

In each condition, there were 20 pairs of two-character Pinyin words and their corresponding (unpresented) characters. Again, the words were presented in Pinyin. In the O+S+ condition, the character (沙) that corresponds to the first syllable of the Pinyin word and the color-target character (海) shared the semantic radical (氵, meaning related to water), and the character meanings were related (sand-sea). In the O+S- condition, the first character of the Pinyin word (镜) and the color-target character (镇) shared the semantic radical (钅, meaning related to metal) but the two characters are not related in meaning; the first character means “mirror” while the second character means “town”. In the O-S- condition (the baseline condition), the first character of the Pinyin word (椅) and the color-target character (钢) shared neither a semantic radical nor meaning (chair-steel). An example from each condition is in Table 32. Corresponding word frequency for Pinyin word, target character frequency, stroke number for word and target character were controlled across conditions: Fs<1. For more details on frequency and stroke number, please see Appendix C Table C2.

Table 3.

Example stimuli of each condition in Experiment 2

Condition Pinyin Word Target Character
O+S+ shā zi (Pinyin) meaning: sand 子(corresponding characters of Pinyin) (meaning: sea)
O+S− jìnɡ zi (Pinyin) meaning: mirror 子(corresponding characters of Pinyin) (meaning: town)
O-S- (baseline condition) yǐ zi (Pinyin) meaning: chair 子(corresponding characters of Pinyin) (meaning: steel)

The procedure was the same as in Experiment 1. Participants were required to make a semantic judgment on a Pinyin word and then to make a color judgment of a character that followed. If the semantic radical is activated as an orthographic object in Pinyin processing, we expect the color judgment latency of the target character in O+S+ and O+S- conditions to be longer than in O-S- condition. If the semantic value of the semantic radical is also activated during Pinyin reading, the color judgment latency of the target character in O+S+ condition would be longer than O+S- condition because of increased character activation from related meanings.

Results and Discussion

Two participants were excluded in the color judgments RTs because their color judgment accuracy was lower than 90%, so the results reported below are based on data from 30 participants.

Results of the semantic judgment of Pinyin words and the color judgment of color-target characters in the three conditions are in Table 4. The mixed-effects model comparison showed a difference, although not at the standard level of significance, χ2=3.49, p=.17. The two shared radical conditions (O+) showed longer mean decision times than the baseline condition, and the 33ms difference between O+S+ and O-S- is associated with SE=17.41, t=1.90, p=.06 in a planned pairwise comparison. The O+S- condition did not differ significantly from the O-S- condition, estimate= 16.87 ms, SE=17.40, t=0.97, p=.34. The O+S+ and O+S- condition did not differ, estimate= 16.17 ms, SE=17.39, t=0.93, p=.36.

Table 4.

Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of semantic judgment accuracy, color judgment accuracy and reaction time (ms) in Experiment 3 and semantic judgment accuracy, naming accuracy and reaction time (ms) in Experiment 4.

Conditions Experiment 3 Experiment 4
Semantic judgment Color judgment Semantic judgment Naming
Accuracy Accuracy RTs Accuracy Accuracy RTs
O+S+ .97 (.04) .97 (.05) 676 (121) .97 (.04) .97(.06) 669 (133)
O+S− .98 (.04) .96 (.05) 659 (117) .94 (.05) .98(.04) 718 (144)
O−S− .97 (.04) .98 (.04) 643 (104) .93 (.04) .98(.05) 675 (123)

On the Pinyin semantic judgment task, accuracy did not differ significantly among the three conditions, χ2=0.02, p=.99. For color judgment, accuracy also did not significantly differ across the three conditions, χ2=2.64, p=.27. The final models for color judgment RTs, semantic judgment accuracy and color judgment accuracy all had Condition as a fixed factor, and participant and item intercepts as random effects.

Thus, although the mean color judgment times suggest a radical-based interference effect, especially for a semantic radical that shared its meaning across the implicit and explicitly present character, which is consistent with the prediction that increased word activation produces an increase in color judgment latency, these differences in means fell short of statistical reliability. The weakness of the semantic radical effect—present in means but not in the mixed effects model—may reflect the role of attention, which is explicitly directed to the color judgment task. This possibility leads to the prediction that effects of a semantic radical might emerge in an explicit word processing task. Experiment 4 tested this prediction by employing a naming task on the target character.

Experiment 4

Method

Participants.

Twenty-four Chinese undergraduates from South China Normal University (17 females, 7 males), average age 20 (SD=2.1), were paid for their participation in the experiment. All participants were familiar with Pinyin and had started to learn Pinyin from first grade of elementary school. All of them were bilingual in English. None had been in the earlier experiment.

Stimuli, design and procedure.

The stimuli and design were the same as in Experiment 3. The procedure was the same as in Experiment 2: Participants were required to make a meaning decision on a Pinyin word and then to name a character that followed. The key comparisons involved the effects of radical and meaning overlap between the implicit character corresponding to the Pinyin and the character to be named, O+S+; O+S-; O-S-.

Results and Discussion

The semantic judgment accuracies of Pinyin words and the naming accuracies and latencies of target characters in the three conditions are displayed in Table 4. Only trials that produced accurate responses for both semantic judgment and character naming were included in the analysis of naming times. For target character naming, the mean latency for the O+S- condition was longer than for the baseline O-S-, suggesting that a shared semantic radical interfered with target naming when its meaning was different from the meaning of the character. Latencies for the O+S+ condition did not differ from those for the O-S- baseline and were shorter than those of O+S-. The interference produced by a radical when the meanings were not shared across characters disappeared when the meanings were shared. Thus, unlike the interference effect in the color judgment task, which requires the presented character to be ignored, an explicit requirement to name the character brings about an effect of semantics, suggesting that meaning was activated by the Pinyin meaning judgment task. The following paragraphs report the statistics that support these conclusions.

The three conditions produced differences in target naming latencies, χ2=6.20, p=.045. Planned pairwise comparisons showed that character naming latency in O+S- condition was marginally longer than in the baseline (O-S-) condition, estimate=40.77 ms, SE=21, t=1.94, p=.057. The O+S+ condition produced shorter naming latencies than O+S- condition, estimate=−50.26 ms, SE=20.81, t=−2.42, p=.02, but did not differ from the O-S- baseline, estimate=−9.49 ms, SE=20.91, t=−0.45, p=.65.

Neither semantic judgment accuracy nor character naming accuracy showed significant differences across the three conditions, χ2=0.81, p=.67; χ2=2.20, p=.33. The final models for naming accuracy, naming RTs and semantic judgment accuracy had Condition as a fixed factor, and participant and item intercepts as random effects.

Experiment 4 found that both semantic orthographic units and their meaning values were activated in an explicit character naming task. When the implicit and explicit characters shared semantic radicals, interference emerged if the characters were unrelated in meaning. However, there was no interference when the semantic radical was congruent with the character meaning. The results indicate that the meaning of the semantic radical was activated and contributed to the interference effect in character naming.

General Discussion

Our experiments examined reading Pinyin for meaning to observe the extent to which such reading caused the activation of character orthography, including its sublexical orthographic constituents and their phonological and semantic values. We found evidence that sublexical orthographic, phonological, and semantic information were all activated during reading Pinyin for meaning. The sublexical orthographic (radical) activation was observed in both an explicit character naming task (Experiments 2 and 4) and an implicit color judgment task (Experiment 1).

The interference effect emerged only when the functional values of the radical were incongruent with the pronunciation or meaning of the character; i.e., when the phonetic radical was incongruent with character level pronunciation and when the semantic radical was incongruent with character level meaning. No interference effect was found when the shared radicals were congruent with the meaning or pronunciation of the character. The results indicate that pronunciation and meaning of sublexical orthographic units contribute to the interference effect in an explicit character naming task. In the next section, we consider what this pattern of results implies for reading processes.

Which character-centered constituents are activated in reading Pinyin for meaning?

The results indicate that when Chinese adults read a word written in Pinyin for meaning, this leads to an automatic activation of the corresponding Chinese orthographic unit: the character. As part of this process, the sublexically orthographic, phonological and semantic constituents of character are also activated.

The congruence of character pronunciations and meanings in relation to that of their phonetic and semantic radicals emerged as important when a character was named. The finding that orthographic, phonological, and semantic constituents are activated during Pinyin reading mimics results from primed character naming (Feldman et al, 1997, 1999; Perfetti & Tan, 1998; Zhou & Marslen-Wilson, 1999). For example, orthographic, phonological, and semantic priming effects have been observed to emerge rapidly over a few milliseconds of character processing (Perfetti & Tan, 1998), with orthographic effects emerging first. Thus, although Pinyin reading seems to be quite different from character reading, we find that reading Pinyin produces implicit character reading processes.

The fact that reading a Pinyin spelling of a Chinese word activates its corresponding character and its sublexical radicals has general implications for the role of characters in Chinese reading. With sufficient experience in Chinese reading, the character becomes the basic point of access to the written Chinese lexicon. Its central role in skilled Chinese reading causes it be a mediator to meaning—a gateway to the printed lexicon--even when a reader reads the less common Pinyin. At a more general level--in any language--learners come to acquire interconnected lexical constituents (orthography, phonology and semantics) that allow written words to be read for their meaning and pronunciation. Although reading shares both common procedures and neural pathways across different writing systems (Bolger, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2005; Perfetti, Cao & Booth, 2013), visuo-orthographic information appears to play a more important role in Chinese reading compared with alphabetic writing (Li, Shu, McBride-Chang, Liu, & Peng, 2012; Siok & Fletcher, 2001; Sun, Yang, Desroches, Liu, & Peng, 2011). This study adds the conclusion that reading Pinyin also brings access to the character-based lexicon that serves typical Chinese reading. In addition, Pinyin can strengthen not only the phonological representation but also the association between phonology and character orthography (Chen, Zhou, & Wang, 2016; Guan, et al., 2011; Lin et al., 2010; McBride-Chang, Bialystok, Chong, & Li, 2004; Shu, Peng, & McBride-Chang, 2008; Zhu, Liu, Ding, & Peng, 2009), which would facilitate the orthographic activation in Pinyin reading.

The character effect in Pinyin reading is also observed in spoken Chinese word processing across a range of different tasks, including lexical decision task, semantic relatedness judgment task and picture-word interference paradigm (Qu & Damian, 2017; Zhang, Chen, Weekes, & Yang, 2009; Zhang & Weekes, 2009; Zou et al., 2012), although some studies found that character activation occurs only in spoken language tasks that rely heavily on orthographic information (Bi, Wei, Jassen, & Han, 2009; Cao et al., 2011; Zhang & Damian, 2012). It appears that literate adults have established connections between spoken words and their corresponding characters and that these connections can be activated at least under some conditions. For example, in an auditory lexical decision task, Zou et al. (2012) manipulated the relation between the first syllable of two-syllable primes and targets. The first syllable of the primes and target corresponded to the same character in half the trials, but without sharing either pronunciation or meaning; i.e., the shared character was a homograph. Decision times were faster when the first syllable of the prime and target corresponded to the same character than when they corresponded to different characters. Because the prime words and target words were always unrelated in meaning, this effect was due to the syllable-character correspondence—an implicit character orthography effect. Thus, access to the lexicon for meaning, either through the spoken syllable itself or through the Pinyin that spells it, seems to produce activation of the character. The orthographic effect in Pinyin reading and auditory Chinese word processing is consistent with the bimodal interactive activation model of word recognition (Grainger et al., 2003), if we make an additional assumption that activation processes can operate on syllabic units. The model proposes a bidirectional connection between orthographic codes and phonological codes. This allows orthographic representations to be activated from auditory input and phonological representations to be activated from visual input. Reading Pinyin activates phonological codes, which can activate the orthographic representations of Chinese words.

The semantic radical effect was found only in the explicit naming task and not in the implicit color judgment task. Because both tasks were preceded by the Pinyin meaning task, we assume that the Pinyin-to-character process occurred in both cases. These differing results indicate that radical activation may play a greater role when one has to name a character. The color judgment task is able to detect whole character activation in Pinyin reading (Chen et al., 2014, 2017), but may be less sensitive to sublexical radical activation.

Facilitation or Inhibition?

Priming effects in explicit primed naming and lexical decision can show facilitation, whereas the Pinyin-initiated effects here were inhibitory. One reason for this may be that primed naming effects are time-dependent. For example, studies of Ding et al. (2004), Perfetti & Tan (1998) and Weekes, Chen & Lin (1998) found facilitative priming from similar orthography at 43ms SOA and 50ms, respectively; however, with increasing SOA, the prime form produced competition, and thus inhibition of target naming (Perfetti & Tan 1998). Similarly, Zhou and Marslen-Willson (1999) found that naming target characters that shared radicals with primes became inhibitory with longer SOAs, both 100ms and 200ms compared with 57ms SOA; Feldman and Siok (1999) found inhibition when primes and targets shared semantic radicals at 243ms SOA. Leck, Weekes and Chen (1995) also found an interference effect in a semantic categorization paradigm when the characters are visually similar to the targets. Thus, the emergence of facilitative or inhibitory effects depends on the duration of prime processing that occurs prior to the appearance of a target. In the present naming studies, the SOA between the Pinyin word and the target character was response dependent. Participants had 1500ms to respond prior to the appearance of the character, with response times averaging around 700ms. This is well into the range where inhibition would be expected in a priming task. Thus, there is congruence between primed naming results and the present Pinyin results. In addition, the facilitative priming effect for congruent phonology and meaning in Pinyin reading is also consistent with character reading (Perfetti, Liu, & Tan, 2005), where the facilitated phonological and semantic priming effect persists with long SOA.

Boundary Conditions

An important point to note is the boundary conditions on the Pinyin character priming effect. In one of their experiments, Chen et al. (2014) found no evidence of character activation (i.e., no interference effect) when participants read Pinyin silently (with no meaning judgment) at an SOA of 300ms. The key boundary condition is meaning judgments require the reader to access a lexical entry that connects the word form to meaning, something they could do well when required, as indicated by their high accuracy rates on Pinyin semantic judgments. Reading for meaning, something that is only implicit—and thus variable—without a specific meaning task. Without explicit target instructions (e.g., does the word refer to a person?), reading Pinyin silently is an unreliable path to meaning, because of the large number of homophones (one syllable generally maps to an average 11 characters without regard to tone). Readers come to rely on the character-to-meaning connection to select or verify a meaning in combination with the phonological activation that can occur in character reading. Thus, in the Pinyin semantic judgment task, the activation of the character by a meaning category (e.g., kind of person) secures a character-meaning connection.

The SOAs between experiments are also different, 300ms for Pinyin reading task and 1500ms for meaning judgment. Although it is possible that an SOA longer than 300ms is needed for the effect, 300ms should be sufficient, based on a result of Fu, Chen, Smith, Iverson & Mathews (2002), who found that reading two-syllable Pinyin words took 3 times longer than reading two-character words. Since single character priming can occur at around 50ms (Chen & Shu, 2001; Perfetti & Tan, 1998), extrapolation suggests 150ms for a Pinyin syllable and 300ms for a two-syllable Pinyin word.

Conclusion

We find evidence that reading a word written in Pinyin, an alphabetic spelling of Chinese words, leads to the activation of the corresponding character. This activation involves the character as an orthographic unit, its component semantic and phonetic radicals, and their meaning and pronunciation. That these effects are initiated by the reading of an alphabetically written word reflects the centrality of the character in the Chinese orthographic lexicon.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on the earlier versions of this manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by China National Social Science Foundation 15CYY020 to Lin Chen and NSF award OMA-0836012 to the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center and NIH award 1R01HD058566–01A1 to the University of Pittsburgh (Charles Perfetti, PI).

Appendix A. Stimuli of Experiment 1 and 2

Table A1.

Stimuli of O+P+ condition

Pinyin corresponding characters meaning phonetic radical Pronunciation of radical target Pinyin of target meaning of target
zhū zi 珠子 bead zhū zhū spider
dié zi 碟子 saucer dié spy
nǎo zi 脑子 brain n/a nǎo angry
páo zi 袍子 robe bāo pào cannon
dīnɡ zi 钉子 nail dīnɡ dīnɡ stare
ɡōu zi 钩子 hook ɡōu ɡōu ditch
wén zi 蚊子 mosquito wén wén stripe
ɡǎo zi 稿子 manuscript ɡǎo ɡǎo do
hóu zi 猴子 monkey hóu hóu throat
yǐ zi 椅子 chair lean
yā zi 鸭子 duck jiǎ detain
lán zi 篮子 basket jiān lán blue
dǎn zi 胆子 courage dàn dān undertake
jìnɡ zi 镜子 mirror jìnɡ jìnɡ condition
jiǎn zi 剪子 scissor qián jiān fry
zhǒnɡ zi 种子 seed zhōng zhǒnɡ swell
chánɡ zi 肠子 gut 怀 n/a chànɡ fluent
lún zi 轮子 wheel lún lún ethic
jiǎo zi 饺子 dumpling jiāo jiào compare
qún zi 裙子 skirt jūn qún group

Table A2.

Stimuli of O+P- condition

Pinyin corresponding characters meaning phonetic radical Pronunciation of radical target Pinyin of target meaning of target
zhuī zi 锥子 awl zhuī huái Huai River
zhù zi 柱子 pillar zhǔ wǎnɡ toward
shénɡ zi 绳子 rope mǐn yínɡ fly
bǎ zi 靶子 target féi fat
pāi zi 拍子 racket bái uncle
bēi zi 杯子 cup 怀 huái bosom
bǎn zi 板子 board fǎn ɡuī convert
chuí zi 锤子 hammer chuí tuò spit
cūn zi 村子 village cùn zhǒu arm
ɡé zi 格子 plaid ɡé luò Luo River
shū zi 梳子 comb n/a liú flow
jià zi 架子 shelf jiā congratulate
méi zi 梅子 plum měi humiliate
niè zi 镊子 tweezers niè shè absorb
shā zi 沙子 sand shǎo chāo money
shì zi 柿子 persimmon shì pèi abundant
dù zi 肚子 stomach shè agency
xiù zi 袖子 sleeve yóu chōu draw
xié zi 鞋子 shoes guī child
wà zi 袜子 socks foam

Table A3.

Stimuli of O-P- condition

Pinyin corresponding characters meaning phonetic radical Pronunciation of radical target Pinyin of target meaning of target
kòu zi 扣子 button kǒu boarder
zhuì zi 坠子 pendant duì dài loan
yín zi 银子 silver gèn niǔ twist
hú zi 胡子 beard ōu gull
yǐnɡ zi 影子 shadow jǐng kuǎn fund
xiānɡ zi 箱子 suitcase xiāng wān bent
táo zi 桃子 peach zhào chún pure
pén zi 盆子 basin fēn shē luxurious
shī zi 狮子 lion shī wǎn regret
sǎnɡ zi 嗓子 throat sāng cái material
liàn zi 链子 chain lián paste
mào zi 帽子 hat mào zhà blast
pínɡ zi 瓶子 bottle bìng wán naughty
chǎn zi 铲子 spade chǎn shuì tax
tī zi 梯子 ladder yàn test
lú zi 炉子 stove fèn part
kù zi 裤子 trousers zhí breed
ɡùn zi 棍子 stick kūn wèi smell
lǐnɡ zi 领子 collar lìng xīn joyful
biān zi 鞭子 whip 便 biàn wēi tiny

Appendix B. Stimuli of Experiment 3 and 4

Table B1.

Stimuli of O+S+ condition

Pinyin corresponding characters meaning of Pinyin semantic radical meaning of semantic radical target Pinyin of target meaning of target
zhù zi 柱子 pillar tree ɡēn root
táo zi 桃子 peach tree core
chénɡ zi 橙子 orange tree jié tangerine
lǐ zi 李子 prune tree xìnɡ apricot
ɡuì zi 柜子 cabinet tree chú closet
lín zi 林子 forest tree shù tree
nǎo zi 脑子 brain organ xiōnɡ breast
chánɡ zi 肠子 gut organ liver
chuí zi 锤子 hammer metal tiě iron
chǎn zi 铲子 spade metal qiāo shovel
yín zi 银子 silver metal tónɡ copper
dīnɡ zi 钉子 nail metal zhēn needle
kù zi 裤子 trousers clothes ɡuà upper garment
xiù zi 袖子 sleeve clothes shān shirt
dàn zi 担子 burden hand tiāo carry
shā zi 沙子 sand water hǎi sea
hé zi 盒子 box utensil pén basin
wén zi 蚊子 mosquito insect fēnɡ bee
lán zi 篮子 basket bamboo kuānɡ crate
dí zi 笛子 flute bamboo xiāo vertical flute

Table B2.

Stimuli of O+S- condition

Pinyin corresponding characters meaning semantic radical meaning of semantic radical target Pinyin of target meaning of target
yòu zi 柚子 grapefruit tree quán power
shì zi 柿子 persimmon tree cūn village
méi zi 梅子 plum tree biāo sign
bǎn zi 板子 board tree hánɡ Hang
bànɡ zi 棒子 bar tree zhěn pillow
ɡùn zi 棍子 stick tree pole
bó zi 脖子 neck organ cured meat
dù zi 肚子 stomach organ jiāo glue
jìnɡ zi 镜子 mirror metal zhèn town
zhuī zi 锥子 awl metal jūn an ancient unit of weight
niè zi 镊子 tweezers metal chāo money
zhuó zi 镯子 bracelet metal jǐn brocade
qún zi 裙子 skirt clothes brown
páo zi 袍子 robe clothes chū beginning
pāi zi 拍子 racket hand tǐnɡ endure
chí zi 池子 sink water you
ɡài zi 盖子 lid utensil yán salt
xiē zi 蝎子 scorpion insect hónɡ rainbow
xiānɡ zi 箱子 suitcase bamboo strategy
shāi zi 筛子 sifter bamboo piān a piece of writing

Table B3.

Stimuli of O-S- condition

Pinyin corresponding characters meaning semantic radical meaning of semantic radical target Pinyin of target meaning of target
yǐ zi 椅子 chair tree ɡānɡ steel
tī zi 梯子 ladder tree jiàn key
zhuō zi 桌子 desk tree kuī helmet
yē zi 椰子 coconut tree ǎo coat
shū zi 梳子 comb tree huàn change
jià zi 架子 shelf tree symbol
dǎn zi 胆子 courage organ sōnɡ pine
bǎnɡ zi 膀子 arm organ suǒ lock
qián zi 钳子 pliers metal tǒnɡ bucket
liàn zi 链子 chain metal cái material
ɡōu zi 钩子 hook metal xiā shrimp
ɡuō zi 锅子 wok metal jiǎo foot
wà zi 袜子 socks clothes tānɡ soup
bèi zi 被子 quilt clothes zhuānɡ stake
kòu zi 扣子 button hand skin
zhā zi 渣子 dreg water saw
pán zi 盘子 plate utensil zhēnɡ kite
é zi 蛾子 moth insect wrapper
kuài zi 筷子 chopsticks bamboo pear
lǒu zi 篓子 crate bamboo chái firewood

Appendix C

Table C1.

Characteristics of stimuli (standard deviations in parentheses) in Experiment 1 and 2

Condition Corresponding word for Pinyin Target character
frequency stroke frequency stroke
O+P+ 12(18) 14(3) 81(107) 10(3)
O+P− 10(12) 13(3) 78(87) 9(2)
O−P− 13(17) 14(3) 79(90) 10(2)

Table C2.

Characteristics of stimuli (standard deviations in parentheses) in Experiment 3 and 4

Condition Corresponding word for Pinyin Target character
frequency stroke frequency stroke
O+S+ 12 (19) 13 (3) 69 (112) 10(3)
O+S− 10 (15) 15 (3) 65(81) 10(3)
O−S− 8 (13) 14 (2) 56(65) 10(2)

Appendix D

Table D1.

Fixed effect estimates and pair-wise comparisons for color judgment reaction times in Experiment 1.

Estimate SE t p
Intercept (O-P- baseline) 687.26 23.42 29.35 <.001
O+P+ vs. O-P- 23.66 17.91 1.32 0.19
O+P− vs. O−P− 38.92 18.12 2.15 <.05
O+P+ vs. O+P− −15.26 16.88 −0.90 0.37

Note. SE = standard error.

Table D2.

Summary of random item and participant effects for color judgment reaction times in Experiment 1.

Correlations
Random effect SD 1 2
Item
1. Intercept 39.96
Participant
1. Intercept (O-P- baseline) 108.74
2. O+P+ vs. O-P- 33.18 > .99
3. O+P- vs. O-P- 36.37 > .99 > .99
Residual error 184.08

Note. SD = standard deviation.

Table D3.

Fixed effect estimates and pair-wise comparisons for naming times in Experiment 2.

Estimate SE t p
Intercept (O-P- baseline) 665.48 27.20 24.46 <.001
O+P+ vs. O-P- 8.50 24.97 0.34 0.74
O+P− vs. O−P− 107.70 24.96 4.32 <.001
O+P+ vs. O+P− −99.20 25.03 −3.96 <.001

Table D4.

Summary of random item and participant effects for naming times in Experiment 2.

Random effect SD
Item
Intercept 67.71
Participant
Intercept 101.59
Residual error 191.52

Table D5.

Fixed effect estimates and pair-wise comparisons for color judgment reaction times in Experiment 3.

Estimate SE t p
Intercept (O-S- baseline) 643.65 22.60 28.48 <.001
O+S+ vs. O−S− 33.03 17.41 1.90 0.06
O+S− vs. O−S− 16.87 17.40 0.97 0.34
O+S+ vs. O+S− 16.17 17.39 0.93 0.36

Table D6.

Summary of random item and participant effects for color judgment reaction times in Experiment 3.

Random effect SD
Item
Intercept 41.37
Participant
Intercept 103.79
Residual error 192.40

Table D7.

Fixed effect estimates and pair-wise comparisons for naming times in Experiment 4.

Estimate SE t p
Intercept (O-S- baseline) 678.28 29.90 22.69 <.001
O+S+ vs. O−S− −9.49 20.91 −0.45 0.65
O+S− vs. O−S− 40.77 21.00 1.94 0.057
O+S+ vs. O+S− −50.26 20.81 −2.42 <.05

Table D8.

Summary of random item and participant effects for naming times in Experiment 4.

Random effect SD
Item
Intercept 55.0
Participant
Intercept 126.9
Residual error 168.8

Footnotes

1

Some characters in the O+P+ condition are irregular, i.e. the character has a pronunciation that differs from that of its phonetic radical (for example, 碟(dié) -枼(yè)) or contains a phonetic radical that cannot stand alone as character and thus has no pronunciation (for example, 脑(nǎo)-㐫(n/a)). Among these irregular characters, all have a relatively high consistency value, i.e. they have same pronunciation as their orthographic neighbors containing the same phonetic radial. This means that all phonetic radicals in the experiment, whether in regular or irregular characters, are related to the pronunciation of the character.

Effect of tones is not considered in the current study. Pairs share same and different tones showed similar patterns.

2

Some semantic radicals appeared in more than one character in Experiment 3 and 4. Although this means there was some orthographic overlap across items, there was no evidence that radical repetition influenced the orthographic effect, which was not stronger in Experiments 3 and 4 than in Experiments 1 and 2, where no radicals were repeated.

Disclosure of interest

The authors report no potential conflict of interest.

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