Center for Cognition and Brain Disorder, Hangzhou Normal University, China; Institute of Psychological Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, China; Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, China.
Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China; Brain and Mind Institute, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2019 Nov;134:107194. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107194. Epub 2019 Sep 19.
While skilled readers produce an increased and left-lateralized event-related-potential (ERP) component, known as N170, for strings of letters compared to strings of less familiar units, it remains unclear whether perceptual familiarity plays an important role in driving the increased and left-lateralized N170 for print. The present study addressed this issue by examining N170 responses for regular Chinese characters and cursive Chinese characters which are visually less familiar regarding their form, yet with phonological and semantic properties. Stroke combinations, which are with unfamiliar visual form and without phonological or semantic properties, were used as low-level control stimuli. Twenty college students (22.6 ± 1.2 years) were examined. A content-irrelevant color matching task was used to control for differences of attention load across familiar and unfamiliar stimuli. A left-lateralized N170 was evoked only by regular characters, but not by cursive characters or stroke combinations. Moreover, cursive characters, which are principally readable but visually unfamiliar, produced a lower N170 than regular characters, and no N170 difference was found compared with stroke combinations. These results suggest that visual form familiarity serves as an important driver for the increased and left-lateralized N170 response.
虽然熟练的读者在阅读字母串时会产生一个增强的左侧事件相关电位（ERP）成分，称为 N170，而阅读不太熟悉的单位串时则不会产生这种成分，但目前尚不清楚感知熟悉度是否在驱动 N170 对印刷品的增强和左侧化中起着重要作用。本研究通过检查正规汉字和草书汉字的 N170 反应来解决这个问题，这些汉字在形式上视觉上不太熟悉，但具有语音和语义属性。笔画组合作为低水平的控制刺激，具有不熟悉的视觉形式，没有语音或语义属性。二十名大学生（22.6±1.2 岁）被检查。使用与内容无关的颜色匹配任务来控制注意力负荷在熟悉和不熟悉刺激之间的差异。只有正规字符才能引起左侧 N170，而草书字符或笔画组合则不能。此外，草书字符虽然主要是可读的，但视觉上不熟悉，产生的 N170 比正规字符低，与笔画组合相比没有发现 N170 差异。这些结果表明，视觉形式熟悉度是增强和左侧化 N170 反应的重要驱动因素。
