Zhang Kai, Gu Feng, Yu Hongzhi
Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Northwest Minzu University, Lanzhou, China.
Key Laboratory of China's Ethnic Languages and Intelligent Processing of Gansu Province, Northwest Minzu University, Lanzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 17;13:1061990. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1061990. eCollection 2022.
Logographic language and alphabetic language differ significantly in orthography. Investigating the commonality and particularity of visual word recognition between the two distinct writing systems is informative for understating the neural mechanisms underlying visual word recognition. In the present study, we compared the chronometry of early lexical processing and the brain regions involved in early lexical processing between Chinese (logographic language) and Mongolian (alphabetic language) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) using both implicit and explicit reading tasks. Familiar Chinese one-character words (lexical) and unknown Chinese one-character words (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Chinese readers in Experiment 1. Mongolian words (lexical) and pseudowords (non-lexical) were pseudorandomly presented to native Mongolian readers in Experiment 2. In the color decision task, participants were asked to decide the color (black or blue) of each stimulus. In the lexical recognition task, participants were asked to report whether they could recognize each stimulus. The results showed that in both experiments and both tasks, ERPs to lexical items differed significantly from those to non-lexical items in the parietooccipital scalp region approximately 250 ms after stimulus onset, reflecting the early lexical processing, which likely originated from the ventral occipitotemporal cortex as revealed by source analysis. These results indicated that although Chinese and Mongolian differed markedly in orthographic features, the neural mechanisms underlying early lexical processing are similar between the two languages.
表意文字和字母文字在拼字法上有显著差异。研究这两种不同书写系统之间视觉单词识别的共性和特殊性，对于理解视觉单词识别背后的神经机制具有重要意义。在本研究中，我们通过使用隐式和显式阅读任务记录事件相关电位（ERP），比较了中文（表意文字）和蒙古文（字母文字）早期词汇加工的时间测量以及参与早期词汇加工的脑区。在实验1中，熟悉的中文单字（词汇）和不认识的中文单字（非词汇）被伪随机呈现给以中文为母语的读者。在实验2中，蒙古语单词（词汇）和伪词（非词汇）被伪随机呈现给以蒙古语为母语的读者。在颜色判断任务中，要求参与者判断每个刺激的颜色（黑色或蓝色）。在词汇识别任务中，要求参与者报告他们是否能识别每个刺激。结果表明，在两个实验和两个任务中，刺激开始后约250毫秒，顶枕头皮区域对词汇项目的ERP与对非词汇项目的ERP有显著差异，反映了早期词汇加工，源分析显示这可能起源于枕颞叶腹侧皮质。这些结果表明，尽管中文和蒙古文在拼字特征上有明显差异，但两种语言早期词汇加工的神经机制是相似的。
