The Semantic and Phonological Priming in Written Chinese Word Recognition

Abstract

Semantic priming refers to a facilitation of responding speed due to the presentation of a semantically related word, while, similarly, phonological priming refers to improved recognition of a target word preceded by a word sharing the same phonological feature. Even though both of these priming effects were proved to be effective in lexical processing, it is still uncertain about whether there is difference between semantic priming effect and phonological priming effect in visual word recognition. This study focused on semantic and phonological priming effects in reading two-character Chinese words. With the lexical decision task, 18 native Mandarin speakers voluntarily took part in the experiment. It was shown that the responding speed to the target word preceded by semantic primes was faster than that preceded by phonological primes than that preceded by unrelated control primes. In other words, there are positive semantic and phonological priming effects in reading Chinese, and the effect of semantic priming is stronger than that of phonological priming. The findings supported dual-route model in lexical processing and shed more light on the studies concerning semantic and phonological priming effects in reading Chinese words.