School of Psychology, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China.
Key Laboratory of Behavioral and Mental Health of Gansu Province, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China.
Eur J Neurosci. 2024 Oct;60(7):5553-5568. doi: 10.1111/ejn.16508. Epub 2024 Aug 20.
Readers of Chinese characters need to recognize how they are formed in order to identify them correctly. However, our understanding of the cognitive processing of characters in working memory is limited. In Experiment 1, using the character N-back task paradigm, electrophysiological data were recorded from 26 participants to investigate the effects of the visual feature of radicals on neural activity during the character recognition, updating and maintenance in the N-back task. Results showed that compound characters required longer response times than single-component characters. For the event-related potentials (ERPs), the compound character condition had more negative N2pc and lower P300 amplitudes than the single-component character condition. In Experiment 2, data from 26 participants were used to analyse the effect of the phonological feature of radicals on neural activity during the character recognition, updating and maintenance in the N-back task. Results showed that there was a larger P200 in the irregular character condition than in the regular character condition, but there was no difference between the regular and the irregular characters in the N2pc, P300 and slow wave (SW) components. The visual feature and the phonological feature of the radicals may have different effects on the character processing. This study reveals the neural effects of Chinese character radicals on cognitive processing in a working memory task and provides behavioural and electrophysiological evidence for a theoretical model of verbal working memory subprocesses.
阅读汉字的人需要识别汉字的构成方式，才能正确地识别它们。然而，我们对工作记忆中汉字认知加工的理解是有限的。在实验 1 中，我们使用汉字 N-back 任务范式，记录了 26 名参与者的脑电数据，以研究部首的视觉特征对 N-back 任务中汉字识别、更新和维持阶段神经活动的影响。结果表明，复合字比单部件字需要更长的反应时间。对于事件相关电位（ERP），复合字条件的 N2pc 波幅更负，P300 波幅更低。在实验 2 中，我们使用 26 名参与者的数据来分析部首的语音特征对 N-back 任务中汉字识别、更新和维持阶段神经活动的影响。结果表明，不规则字条件的 P200 比规则字条件大，但在 N2pc、P300 和慢波（SW）成分上，规则字和不规则字没有差异。部首的视觉特征和语音特征可能对汉字处理有不同的影响。这项研究揭示了汉字部首在工作记忆任务中的认知加工的神经效应，为言语工作记忆子过程的理论模型提供了行为和电生理证据。
