Subword Activation in Reading Japanese Single Kanji Character Words

doi:10.1006/brln.1999.2107

Brain and Language

Volume 68, Issues 1–2, 1 June 1999, Pages 75-81

https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.1999.2107 Get rights and content

Abstract

Kanji are categorized into four types based on the combination of “subword validity” (when the right phonemic radical represents the same On reading as the whole Kanji character) and “radical-neighbor consistency” (when the whole Kanji character represents the same On reading with all its neighbor characters). The study demonstrated that both subword validity and radical-neighbor consistency affect naming latencies and error rates for relatively high-frequency Kanji character words. Moreover, both analytic and holistic decoding processes, which correspond to subword and whole-character activation, are used in the naming of Japanese single Kanji character words. Accounts of the findings by dual-route and connectionist models are discussed.

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Cited by (12)

Synesthetic colors for Japanese late acquired graphemes
2012, Consciousness and Cognition
Citation Excerpt :
Kanji characters are usually visually much more complex than Hiragana and Katakana characters. Moreover, Kanji characters can be divided into several orthographic components called radicals (Saito, Masuda, & Kawakami, 1999). A radical is a subcomponent of a character, and a large number of Kanji characters consist of two or more radicals.
Determinants of synesthetic color choice for the Japanese logographic script, Kanji, were studied. The study investigated how synesthetic colors for Kanji characters, which are usually acquired later in life than other types of graphemes in Japanese language (phonetic characters called Hiragana and Katakana, and Arabic digits), are influenced by linguistic properties such as phonology, orthography, and meaning. Of central interest was a hypothesized generalization process from synesthetic colors for graphemes, learned prior to acquisition of Kanji, to Kanji characters learned later. Results revealed that color choices for Kanji characters depend on meaning and phonological information. Some results suggested that colors are generalized from Hiragana characters and Arabic digits to Kanji characters via phonology and meaning, respectively. Little influence of orthographic information was observed. The findings and approach of this study contributes to a clarification of the mechanism underlying grapheme-color synesthesia, especially in terms of its relationship to normal language processing.
Surface dyslexia in a Japanese patient with semantic dementia: Evidence for similarity-based orthography-to-phonology translation
2003, Neuropsychologia
We studied the reading performance of a Japanese-speaking patient, TI, with bilateral but asymmetrical (left more than right) temporal-lobe atrophy, severe anomia, and poor word comprehension. Most Japanese kanji characters correspond to several different legitimate pronunciations in different contexts, with varying degrees of correspondence consistency. TI made many errors in reading aloud words that violate statistically typical character-sound correspondences, especially for less common words, but had relatively preserved ability to read aloud strings in which the assignment of the typical pronunciation for each component character yields the correct pronunciation for the whole word. The degree of consistency of character-sound correspondences affected his performance on both words and nonwords in a graded manner. One interpretation is that TI’s surface dyslexic reading reflects intact direct computation of phonology from orthography, but without the additional constraint from word meaning that is, in this framework, considered critical for correct pronunciation of lower-frequency words with atypical character-sound correspondences. Another interpretation is that TI’s performance reflects partially damaged lexical knowledge of whole-word orthography and phonology, coupled with spared sublexcal knowledge of character-sound correspondence rules. Whichever of these interpretations is preferred, this study offers the most detailed information yet available on the characteristics of surface dyslexia in Japanese.
The effect of number of kanji radical companions in character activation with a multi-radical-display task
2002, Brain and Language
The majority of Japanese complex kanji consist of two subword units (radicals), and each radical is differentiated according to its combinability. Radical-type frequency is defined as the number of radical companions (NC) functioning as the number of characters containing that radical. The current study is intended to address the question of whether the NC plays a role in kanji character activation under a multi-radical-display (MRD) instead of a tachistoscopic display. An MRD task was used in which the NC was manipulated and the frequency of use of the whole characters was matched on average across the experimental conditions. Participants were divided into two groups (good knowledge vs poor knowledge) according to the score of a kanji completion task. The participants' task was to select an appropriate combination of radicals to compose a legitimate character under the MRD condition. The poor-knowledge group yielded relatively more errors than did the good-knowledge group in the low-NC condition, whereas the good-knowledge group yielded more errors in the high-NC condition than in the low-NC condition. These results demonstrate the different influences of NC as metaknowledge (tacit knowledge of radical productivity) in both good and poor readers.
Interactive processing of phonological information in reading Japanese Kanji character words and their phonemic radicals
2002, Brain and Language
Kanji are categorized into four types based on the combinations of “subword validity” (when the right phonemic radical represents the same On-reading as the whole Kanji character) and “radical-neighbor consistency” (when the whole Kanji character represents the same On-reading as all of its neighbor characters). The study demonstrated that both subword validity and radical-neighbor consistency affect naming latencies and error rates regardless of character frequency. The study also demonstrated that the subword validity affects ease of extraction of a subword's phonology. These results suggest that the phonology of the whole Kanji competes with the subword's phonology. Moreover, the competition is stronger when the radical-neighbors aid in extracting the phonology of the whole Kanji.
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We thank Charles Perfetti, Li Hai Tan, and Donna Erikson for valuable discussions.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hirofumi Saito, Cognitive Informatics Unit, Graduate School of Human Informatics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan 464-8601. E-mail: [email protected].

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Regular ArticleSubword Activation in Reading Japanese Single Kanji Character Words☆

Abstract

Journal of Memory and Language

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Cognition

Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches

Psychological Review

Access to the internal lexicon

Regular Article
Subword Activation in Reading Japanese Single Kanji Character Words☆