Time course of Chinese compound word recognition as revealed by ERP data

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have yielded conflicting results regarding the onset of semantic processing in compound word recognition. This study examined the role of semantics in morphological processing using event-related potentials (ERP) recorded for Chinese compound targets primed by W+M+, W−M+, W−M− (W = whole-word semantics, M = morpheme meaning, + = congruent, and − = incongruent), semantically related and unrelated primes. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 of a masked priming lexical-decision task (SOA = 50 ms), EEG results demonstrated that the brain was sensitive to semantic information as early as between 100 and 250 ms. In Experiment 2 of an unmasked priming lexical-decision task (SOA = 200 ms), data confirmed early semantic access. The two EEG experiments also showed that the semantics of constituent morphemes may have little bearing on compound recognition. Overall, these results seem to converge with a form-and-meaning account of compound recognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Time-course of word recognition
• semantic processing
• compounds
• morphology
• ERP

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for all the insightful comments and valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Given that EEG studies related to morphological processing mechanisms in alphabetic languages and Chinese have largely been calculated from 150 ms or 200 ms, this led us to initially ignore the period before 100 ms. We followed a reviewer’s suggestion and explored whether significant priming differences would be obtained in the 0-100 ms time window of Exp 1 and Exp 2. In Exp 1, no significant effect was found in the 0-50 ms time window. In the 70-80 ms time window, the results of Exp 1 showed that W−M− released significantly more negative waves compared to W+M+ and W−M+ in the central-anterior regions. For experiment 2, in 0-50 ms, all four related conditions were found to release significantly more negative waves compared to the unrelated condition in the central-anterior regions. In the left posterior region only, the results showed a significant difference between W−M− and W−M+ (p = .014). In the 50–100 ms time window, the results revealed that the irrelevant condition released significantly more negative waves than the purely semantic-related condition in the central-anterior regions. Overall, in both Exp1 and Exp2, the morpho-semantic alone still seems to be weak in 0-100 ms.

2 It is important to note that we are unsure about whether the pre-100-ms effects are real or artifact. So, for future studies we might consider analyzing the entire time course to determine if priming effects in EEG signals occur earlier than previously thought.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 62036001], Beijing Social Science Foundation [grant number 20ZDA21], and Beijing Foreign studies University Foundation [grant number 2022SYLZD016].