Automatic Processing of Morphemic Orthography By Mature Readers

The present study involving two converging experiments tested the hypothesis that rapid, automatic processing of lexical items in a morphemic orthography (Chinese) is necessary, though not sufficient, for reading comprehension. The subjects consisted of 23 skilled adult comprehenders contrasted with 23 less skilled comprehenders. Experiment 1 was a vocalization latency task with 80 open class Chinese characters selected according to printed frequency (high or low) and orthographic structure (simple or complex). Analyses of variance of the vocalization latencies show significant main effects of reader ability, frequency, and structure and the greater contribution of low frequency, complex characters. Experiment 2 was a lexical decision task with another 40 open class Chinese characters similarly selected and matched with 40 pseudo Chinese characters. Analyses of variance of the lexical decision latencies show significant main effects of reader ability, lexicality, and structure and the greater contribution by pseudo characters. These results uphold the automaticity hypothesis and are generally confirmed by treating the items as random effects. The interaction of the various factors in the two experiments suggests their joint effects on the response or retrieval stage of accessing the Chinese lexicon.