Most psycholinguistic models of speech production agree on an earlier semantic processing stage and a later word-form encoding stage. Using a logographic language, Mandarin Chinese, Zhang and... Show moreMost psycholinguistic models of speech production agree on an earlier semantic processing stage and a later word-form encoding stage. Using a logographic language, Mandarin Chinese, Zhang and Weekes [2009. Orthographic facilitation effects on spoken word production: Evidence from Chinese. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24(7–8), 1082–1096. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01690960802042133] reported an early effect of orthography in a picture-word-interference study and suggested orthography affects speech production via a lexical-semantic pathway at an early stage. This early orthographic effect without co-occurrence of phonological effect, however, was not replicated [Zhao, La Heij, & Schiller, 2012. Orthographic and phonological facilitation in speech production: New evidence from picture naming in Chinese. Acta Psychologica, 139(2), 272–280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.12.001]. The present study aimed to dissociate further the semantic and phonological representations from orthography by using simplex Chinese characters. The results of Experiment 1 and 2 revealed an orthographic effect but only at a similar point in time as the phonological effect, both of which followed the semantic effect. Our results thus raise further doubts about the role of orthography at the conceptual level of speech planning and lend new evidence to a two-step model of speech production. Show less
This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts. Special attention is given to the fact that the majority of Japanese kanji... Show moreThis thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts. Special attention is given to the fact that the majority of Japanese kanji have multiple pronunciations (generally depending on the combination a kanji forms with other characters). First, using masked priming, it is established that upon presentation of a Japanese kanji multiple pronunciations are activated. In subsequent experiments using word naming with context pictures it is concluded that both Chinese hànzì and Japanese kanji are read out loud via a direct route from orthography to phonology. However, only Japanese kanji become susceptible to semantic or phonological context effects as a result of a cost due to the processing of multiple pronunciations. Finally, zooming in on the size of the articulatory planning unit in Japanese it is concluded that the mora as a phonological unit best complies with the observed data pattern and not the phoneme or the syllable. Show less
