Reading Pinyin activates character orthography for highly experienced learners of Chinese

Lin Chen, Charles A. Perfetti, Ying Leng

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Does reading Pinyin, a Roman alphabet transcription of Chinese, cause the implicit activation of the corresponding Chinese character? To address this question, we carried out two experiments with adult Chinese learners, measuring interference in character reading in a modified Stroop task. Participants first made a meaning judgment on a Pinyin word, and then judged the printed color of a character that was either visually related or unrelated to the character that corresponded to the Pinyin word. A character orthographic interference effect was observed for advanced Chinese learners but not intermediate Chinese learners. The proficiency-dependent emergence of this interference effect suggests its dependence on Chinese character reading experience. For models of Chinese reading, the results demonstrate the role of the character as a gateway to meaning that, through reading experience, comes to be routinely involved in reading for meaning, whether the input is a character or an alphabetic spelling.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)103-111
Number of pages9
JournalBilingualism
Volume22
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Non-native Chinese learners
  • Orthography
  • Pinyin
  • Proficiency

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education
  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

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