Comparison of identification of Chinese versus English words with brief exposures.

Full Abstract

The orthographic differences between Chinese and English should influence the identification of words in the two languages. This study compared the identification of 50 Chinese and 50 comparable English words by 17 Chinese and 17 English participants, respectively. For English words, correlation and analysis of variance indicated significant effects for frequency and letter count. For Chinese words, the same statistical analyses yielded a significant frequency effect. Both analyses also showed stroke count of the first Chinese character was not related to accuracy of identification, while the two analyses yielded inconsistent results concerning relationships between the stroke count of the second character and accuracy of identification. These studies did not employ a masking stimulus, and 5 msec. were enough to activate sensory memory of most Chinese words, while 10 msec. were needed for most English words. These differences were significant by Wilcoxon rank-sum tests.

Author information

Author/s: Wang, Jing (J); Dale, J Alexander (JA);

Affiliation: Department of World Languages and Cultures, Institute for Research on Social Issues Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA. jw41(-atsign-)iupui.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Perceptual and motor skills (Percept Mot Skills), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Feb; vol 108 (issue 1) : pp 51-73

Dates: Created 2009/05/11; Completed 2009/06/10;

PMID: 19425446, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/10/2009, IMS Date: 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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