Orthography Shapes Semantic and Phonological Activation in Reading

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:

This study will investigate whether Chinese orthography differs from English orthography in terms of the relative activation of semantic versus phonological information. Do Chinese characters evoke greater activation of semantic information compared to phonological information? Do they trigger greater activation of semantic information than English orthography? Moreover, few studies have examined Chinese reading and alphabetic reading with the same experimental design. The present study fills these gaps in the literature by examining a previously unstudied phenomenon: semantic substitutions that occur during reading outloud tasks.