Neural evidence for direct meaning access from orthography in Chinese word reading

A fundamental issue in the study of reading is to understand the processes involved in determining word meaning from print. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and scanned participants performing lexical decision tasks to discriminate between real Chinese words and non-words, presented either visually or auditorily. For the visual task, two left inferior frontal cortical regions were significantly more activated for non-words than for words, one in BA (Brodmann's area) 44/45 implied in phonological processing, and one in BA47 implied in semantic processing. For the auditory task, stronger neural activity for non-words, relative to words, was only found in BA44/45 but not in BA47. The results were interpreted to suggest that printed words in Chinese can directly activate their semantic representations, independent of an indirect, mediated pathway through phonology. In reference to related imaging studies on English, our finding implies a greater reliance on orthography in Chinese reading.

► Visual word recognition in English involves heavy phonological mediation.
► Limited evidence suggests phonological mediation is less important in Chinese.
► Chinese readers did visual/auditory lexical decisions while scanned with fMRI.
► Results indicate semantic activation for the visual but not the auditory task.
► There is direct orthography-to-meaning access in Chinese visual word recognition.