Understanding phonological processing in Chinese reading: A multidimensional literature review
Keywords:
Chinese reading; phonological processing; behavioral experiments; ERP experimentsAbstract
This paper aims to provide a review of research on phonological processing in Chinese reading, addressing theoretical debates, experimental evidence, influencing factors, and the development of models. It discusses the core perspectives and focal points of contention surrounding the direct access viewpoint, the phonological mediation hypothesis, and the dual-route theory. Furthermore, it analyzes findings from behavioral experiments, Event-related Potential (ERP) studies, and cross-language comparisons while exploring how Chinese characters, tasks, and individual differences influence phonological processing. The paper summarizes existing models and highlights their challenges and future development directions. The findings suggest that phonological processing in Chinese reading is interactively influenced by multiple factors. Future research should delve deeper into the interplay between phonology, semantics, and graphic forms; broaden research methodologies; and consider individual differences and developmental aspects. This approach will enhance our understanding of the phonological processing mechanisms in Chinese reading, advance reading theory, and inform educational practices.
References
1. Miller GA. The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological review. 1956: 63(2). doi: 81.10.1037/h0043158
2. Chomsky N. Lectures on government and binding: The Pisa lectures (No. 9). Walter de Gruyter. 1993.
3. Marr D. Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. MIT press; 2010.
4. DeFrancis J. The Chinese language: Fact and fantasy. University of Hawaii Press; 1986.
5. Hoosain R. Psycholinguistic Implications for Linguistic Relativity. Psychology Press; 2013.
6. Coltheart M. Reading, phonological recoding, and deep dyslexia. Deep dyslexia; 1987.
7. Chen HC, Flores d’Arcais GB, Cheung SL. Orthographic and phonological activation in recognizing Chinese characters. Psychological Research. 1995; 58(2): 144-153. doi: 10.1007/bf00571102
8. Tan LH, Perfetti CA. Visual Chinese Character Recognition: Does Phonological Information Mediate Access to Meaning? Journal of Memory and Language. 1997; 37(1): 41-57. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1997.2508
9. Zhou X, Marslen-Wilson W. Phonology, Orthography, and Semantic Activation in Reading Chinese. Journal of Memory and Language. 1999; 41(4): 579-606. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1999.2663
10. Perfetti CA, Zhang S. Very early phonological activation in Chinese reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 1995; 21: 24-33.
11. Xu Y, Pollatsek A, Potter MC. The activation of phonology during silent Chinese word reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 1999; 25(4): 838-857. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.25.4.838
12. Lesch MF, Pollatsek A. Automatic access of semantic information by phonological codes in visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 1993; 19(2): 285-294. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.19.2.285
13. Kong L, Zhang JX, Kang C, et al. P200 and phonological processing in Chinese word recognition. Neuroscience Letters. 2010; 473(1): 37-41. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2010.02.014
14. Ziegler JC, Benraïss A, Besson M. From print to meaning: An electrophysiological investigation of the role of phonology in accessing word meaning. Psychophysiology. 1999; 36(6): 775-785. doi: 10.1111/1469-8986.3660775
15. Gao C, Gao H, Zhang Q. Event-related brain potentials related to the identification of different types of signs. NeuroReport. 2019; 30(4): 269-273. doi: 10.1097/wnr.0000000000001195
16. Wang Y, Jiang M, Huang Y, et al. An ERP Study on the Role of Phonological Processing in Reading Two-Character Compound Chinese Words of High and Low Frequency. Frontiers in Psychology. 2021; 12. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.637238
17. Zhou L. Consistency and regularity of Chinese characters: Global congruence plays a more important role than local congruence in character naming [Master’s thesis]. University of Pittsburgh; 2020.
18. Bermudez-Margaretto B, Beltrán D, Dominguez A, et al. Brain Dynamics Reflects Phonological And Semantic Top-Down Influences During Orthographic Processing Of Novel Word Forms. SSRN; 2020.
19. Zhang H, Su IF, Chen F, et al. The time course of orthographic and semantic activation in Chinese character recognition: evidence from anERP study. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. 2019; 35(3): 292-309. doi:20.1080/23273798.2019.1652762
20. Connolly JF, Phillips NA. Event-Related Potential Components Reflect Phonological and Semantic Processing of the Terminal Word of Spoken Sentences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 1994; 6(3): 256-266. doi: 10.1162/jocn.1994.6.3.256
21. Yu R, Wu Y, Gu F. Parallel phonological processing of Chinese characters revealed by flankers tasks. Frontiers in Psychology. 2023; 14. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1239256
22. Bentin S, Mouchetant-Rostaing Y, Giard MH, et al. ERP Manifestations of Processing Printed Words at Different Psycholinguistic Levels: Time Course and Scalp Distribution. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 1999; 11(3): 235-260. doi: 10.1162/089892999563373
23. Meng X, Tian X, Jian J, et al. Orthographic and phonological processing in Chinese dyslexic children: An ERP study on sentence reading. Brain Research. 2007; 1179: 119-130. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2007.08.046
24. Wang J, Liu Q, Wydell TN, et al. Electrophysiological basis of reading related phonological impairment in Chinese speakers with schizophrenia: An ERP study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. 2017; 261: 65-71. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2017.01.004
25. Du F, Jee H, Tamariz M, Shillcock R. Grapho-Syllabic Systematicity in Chinese: Chinese Pictographs Have a Non-Arbitrary relation with their Pronunciations. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; 2022.
26. Zhang C, Kang S. A comparative study on lexical and syntactic features of ESL versus EFL learners’ writing. Frontiers in Psychology. 2022; 13. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1002090
27. Li Y, Yang Y, Tang AC, et al. English spoken word segmentation activates the prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction in Chinese ESL learners: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study. Brain Research. 2020; 1733: 146693. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2020.146693
28. Bermúdez-Margaretto B, Beltrán D, Shtyrov Y, et al. Neurophysiological Correlates of Top-Down Phonological and Semantic Influence during the Orthographic Processing of Novel Visual Word-Forms. Brain Sciences. 2020; 10(10): 717. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10100717
29. Bermúdez-Margaretto B, Kopytin G, Myachykov A, Shtyrov Y. Behavioral and Neurophysiological Correlates of Orthographic Learning in L1 and L2 Alphabets. In: Advances in Cognitive Research, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroinformatics. Springer; 2021.
30. Yum YN, Law SP. N170 reflects visual familiarity and automatic sublexical phonological access in L2 written word processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2021; 24(4): 670-680. doi: 10.1017/s1366728920000759
31. Han Y, Wang Y, Liang F, et al. Phonological decoding does not affect incidental Chinese novel word learning in Uyghur readers: evidence from eye movements. In: Reading and Writing. Springer; 2024.
32. Li Y, Xiao L, Li H. Self‐teaching in Chinese: the roles of phonetic and semantic radicals in orthographic and vocabulary learning. Journal of Research in Reading. 2021; 45(1): 20-42. doi: 10.1111/1467-9817.12379
33. Lin Z, Li X, Qi G, et al. Phonological properties of logographic words modulate brain activation in bilinguals: a comparative study of Chinese characters and Japanese Kanji. Cerebral Cortex. 2024; 34(4). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae150
34. Sripol C, Wang W. A Comparative Study Of Chinese Words With Different Pronunciation And Polyphonic Pronunciation In Thai Chinese Language Learners. International Journal of Chinese Interdisciplinary Studies. 2024; 2(1): 1-13.
35. Read C, Zhang YF, Nie HY, Ding BQ. The ability to manipulate speech sounds depends on knowing alphabetic writing. Cognition. 1986; 24(1-2): 31-44. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(86)90003-X
36. Hsieh CY, Lin WC, Li MF, et al. The concept of neighborhood underlying the phonetic consistency effect in Chinese character recognition: A four-decade review and beyond. Reading and Writing. 2021; 34(5): 1225-1246. doi: 10.1007/s11145-020-10119-0
37. Li A, Yang R, Qu J, et al. Neural representation of phonological information during Chinese character reading. Human Brain Mapping. 2022; 43(13): 4013-4029. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25900
38. Van Orden GC. A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading. Memory & Cognition. 1987; 15(3): 181-198. doi: 10.3758/bf03197716
39. Tong X, McBride-Chang C. Developmental models of learning to read Chinese words. Developmental Psychology. 2010; 46(6): 1662-1676. doi: 10.1037/a0020611
40. Liu Y, Perfetti CA. The time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic activation in Chinese and English word reading: A comparison using ERPs. Journal of Neurolinguistics. 2003; 16: 125–142.
41. Perfetti CA, Liu Y, Tan LH. The lexical constituency model: some implications of research on Chinese for general theories of reading. Psychological Review. 2005; 112(1): 43-59.
42. Zhang L, Zhang Y, Liu Z, et al. The role of orthographic and phonological processing during reading Chinese sentences: Evidence from eye movements. Frontiers in Psychology. 2023; 14. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1148815
43. Rumelhart DE, McClelland JL. Parallel Distributed Processing, Volume 1: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition: Foundations. The MIT Press; 1986.
44. Tan LH, Spinks JA, Eden GF, et al. Reading depends on writing, in Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2005; 102(24): 8781-8785. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0503523102
45. Li MF, Gao XY, Wu JT. Neighborhood effects in Chinese character recognition: Going beyond phonological perspectives to explain a possible underlying mechanism. Reading and Writing. 2019; 33(3): 547-570. doi: 10.1007/s11145-019-09973-4
46. Bermúdez-Margaretto B, Kopytin G, Myachykov A, et al. Biliteracy and acquisition of novel written words: the impact of phonological conflict between L1 and L2 scripts. Psychological Research. 2021; 86(3): 871-890. doi: 10.1007/s00426-021-01529-y
47. Bermudez-Margaretto B, Kopytin G, Myachykov A, et al. Orthographic Learning In L1 And L2 Alphabets: The Impact of Phonological Inconsistency Across Cyrillic and Roman Scripts. SSRN; 2020.
48. Bermúdez-Margaretto B, Shtyrov Y, Beltrán D, et al. Rapid acquisition of novel written word-forms: ERP evidence. Behavioral and Brain Functions. 2020; 16(1). doi: 10.1186/s12993-020-00173-7
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
