Effects of orthography on speech production in Chinese

Qingfang Zhang, Markus F. Damian

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The potential role of orthographic representations on spoken word production was investigated with speakers of Chinese, a non-alphabetic and orthographically non-transparent language. Using the response generation procedure, we obtained the well-known facilitation from word-initial phonological overlap, but this effect was unaffected by whether or not responses shared the initial character. In a study which manipulated the visual similarity of the word-initial character, a significant inhibitory effect of orthography was found. However, this effect disappeared when prompt stimuli were presented auditorily, suggesting that the orthographic effect might be attributable to the memorization stage of the response generation task, rather than reflecting processes genuine to speaking. By contrast, a reliable orthographic effect was found in an oral reading task, suggesting that orthography plays a role only when it is relevant to the word production task. Furthermore, the present findings show that the orthographic effect is tied to the correspondence between orthography and phonology of a language when orthography is relevant to the task used.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)267-283
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Psycholinguistic Research
Volume41
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2012

Research Groups and Themes

  • Language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Effects of orthography on speech production in Chinese'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this