The different time courses of reading different levels of Chinese characters: An ERP study

The dual route processing was generally accepted in the reading of alphabetic languages, which suggests alphabetic words can be read by either addressed pathway or assembled pathway. However, it was still unclear whether there was a particular ‘dual route mechanism’ during reading Chinese characters. In our previous fMRI study, the result showed that there might be a particular ‘dual route mechanism’, and its addressed pathway was similar between Chinese and English, whereas for the need of spatial analysis, the assembled pathway of Chinese was different from that of English which involved grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences. The present study, using event-related potential, which provide more temporal information, aimed to further support our previous view, and peered inside the different time courses of reading different types of Chinese characters. It was found that reading high frequency Chinese characters increased the N170 component which was believed to enhance attention to the addressed pathway in the left occipital–temporal area. Pseudo Chinese characters could be read by a particular assembled pathway, which caused the largest amplitude of P320 component in the right occipital–temporal area, which considered as a key brain area for radical analysis.

► There is a particular ‘dual route mechanism’ during reading Chinese characters.
► The address pathway is important for reading high frequency characters at 170 ms.
► The assembled pathway is vital for reading pseudo Chinese characters at 320 ms.