TY - JOUR
T1 - Development and validation of a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system
AU - Chang, Li Yun
AU - Tseng, Chien Chih
AU - Perfetti, Charles A.
AU - Chen, Hsueh Chih
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was financially supported by the "Chinese Language and Technology Center" and the "Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences" of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) from the Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan. The authors are grateful to Mr. Fu-Rong Wu for his technical assistance as well as the CSL learners and L1 readers for their participation. The authors also appreciate the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - This study developed and validated a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system (CPN system) that can assist researchers in creating experimental materials using Chinese characters. Based on a large-scale dataset of 6097 characters, the CPN system provides researchers with precise Chinese orthographic information (structures and positions, radical frequency, number of strokes, number of radical-sharing neighbors, and position-based regularity) to create three types of experimental stimuli: pseudo-characters, semi non-characters, and whole non-characters. Featuring the position-based regularity of 446 radicals, the CPN system helps researchers to manipulate, or to control for, orthographic characteristics of radicals to study Chinese lexical processing. In two empirical validations for stimuli created by the system, Chinese-as-second-language learners (n = 79) and first-language users (n = 41), respectively, participated in a Chinese orthographic choice task in which participants compared two artificial characters and chose the one that more closely resembled a real Chinese character. Both validations demonstrate that highly proficient Chinese readers are better able to identify pseudo-characters, suggesting that the radical’s position-based information impacts Chinese character identification to different extents. With the empirical support for the created stimuli, the system further affords researchers auto-generated outcomes with downloadable images and Excel sheets for creating customized stimuli, making material selection easy, efficient, and effective. This CPN system is the first large-scale, data-driven tool free for researchers who are interested in studies of written Chinese. CPN should benefit the field of Chinese orthographic processing, Chinese instruction, and cross-linguistic comparisons, providing a useful tool for studying Chinese lexical processing.
AB - This study developed and validated a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system (CPN system) that can assist researchers in creating experimental materials using Chinese characters. Based on a large-scale dataset of 6097 characters, the CPN system provides researchers with precise Chinese orthographic information (structures and positions, radical frequency, number of strokes, number of radical-sharing neighbors, and position-based regularity) to create three types of experimental stimuli: pseudo-characters, semi non-characters, and whole non-characters. Featuring the position-based regularity of 446 radicals, the CPN system helps researchers to manipulate, or to control for, orthographic characteristics of radicals to study Chinese lexical processing. In two empirical validations for stimuli created by the system, Chinese-as-second-language learners (n = 79) and first-language users (n = 41), respectively, participated in a Chinese orthographic choice task in which participants compared two artificial characters and chose the one that more closely resembled a real Chinese character. Both validations demonstrate that highly proficient Chinese readers are better able to identify pseudo-characters, suggesting that the radical’s position-based information impacts Chinese character identification to different extents. With the empirical support for the created stimuli, the system further affords researchers auto-generated outcomes with downloadable images and Excel sheets for creating customized stimuli, making material selection easy, efficient, and effective. This CPN system is the first large-scale, data-driven tool free for researchers who are interested in studies of written Chinese. CPN should benefit the field of Chinese orthographic processing, Chinese instruction, and cross-linguistic comparisons, providing a useful tool for studying Chinese lexical processing.
KW - Chinese lexical processing
KW - Chinese orthography
KW - artificial characters
KW - non-characters
KW - pseudo-characters
KW - semi non-characters
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U2 - 10.3758/s13428-021-01611-8
DO - 10.3758/s13428-021-01611-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 34338992
AN - SCOPUS:85111889015
SN - 1069-9384
VL - 54
SP - 632
EP - 648
JO - Behavior Research Methods
JF - Behavior Research Methods
IS - 2
ER -