Reading Across Writing Systems: Basic Processes and Learning

这个项目的目标是发现阅读的普遍特征和书写系统影响阅读过程的具体方式。 它将集中在两个高度对比的书写系统的比较，即，英语是世界上字母书写系统的代表，而汉语通常被认为是一种独特的语标系统。 字母系统使用无意义的图形（字母）作为系统中的基本单位，并将这些单位映射到口语中的无意义单位（音素）。 因此，字母B映射到声音/B/。 在汉语中，书写系统中没有与音素相对应的单位。相反，基本图形（字符）对应于音节，其中大部分是单词。 这使得书面汉语能够将图形单位与意义直接联系起来。 沿着的事实是，早期的汉字有象形内容，这一事实鼓励了这样一种假设，即汉语的阅读与语音（音韵）无关。 然而，最近的研究，包括Perfetti目前由NSF资助的研究，发现中文读者使用口语形式，就像字母系统的读者一样。 在各种各样的任务中，揭示了单词识别的过程，中国读者使用的发音在无声阅读。 例如，当读者对词义做出判断时，单词的发音会干扰词义判断。 举一个英语的例子，一个读者被要求决定一个物品是否是一种植物，他可能会在单词“flour”上犯错误（或者需要更长的时间来做出决定），因为这个单词与一种植物（“flower”）的发音相同。 如果读者能够避免发音，这种效果就不会发生。 类似的结果现在也被发现用于中文，这表明汉语和英语的意义阅读都涉及发音的激活。 现在的问题变成了如何在几分之一秒内从图形输入到发音和含义的快速单词识别事件。 这两种书写系统之间有什么不同和相似之处？ 他们的视觉处理需求是否存在差异？ 在从图形形式到意义的道路上？ 这些问题将在事件相关电位（ERP）的研究中得到解决，ERP是大脑的电活动，可以提供有关单词阅读事件时间过程的信息。 该项目还将包括功能磁共振成像研究，以增加更多关于阅读中文与阅读英语相比使用的潜在大脑结构的具体信息。 此外，该项目还将研究学习者如何获得第二书写系统的阅读技能这一重要问题。 学习阅读中文的美国学生将在一系列行为和ERP任务中进行研究，这些任务将提供有关学习过程以及与这种新学习相关的一些大脑活动的信息。

The goals of this project are to discover the universal character of reading and the specific ways that writing systems affect reading processes. It will focus on the comparison of two highly contrastive writing systems, i.e., English, representative of the world's alphabetic writing systems, and Chinese, usually considered to be a unique logographic system. Alphabetic systems use meaningless graphs (letters) as the basic unit in the system and map these units onto meaningless units in the spoken language (phonemes). Thus, the letter b maps to the sound /b/. In Chinese, there are no units in the writing system that correspond to phonemes. Instead, the basic graphs (characters) correspond to syllables, most of which are words. This allows written Chinese to link graphic units directly with meaning. Along with the fact that early Chinese characters had pictographic content, this fact has encouraged the hypothesis that Chinese reading occurs without reference to speech (phonology). However, recent research, including Perfetti's current NSF-funded research, has discovered that readers of Chinese make use of spoken word forms, just as readers of alphabetic systems do. In a wide variety of tasks that expose processes of word identification, Chinese readers use the pronunciations in silent reading. For example, when readers make decisions about word meanings, the pronunciation of the words interferes with the meaning judgment. To use an English example, a reader who is asked to decide whether an item is a kind of plant, may make a mistake on the word "flour" (or take longer to make a decision) because the word shares a pronunciation with a word that is a kind of plant ("flower"). If the reader could avoid the pronunciation, such an effect would not occur. Similar results have now been found for Chinese, suggesting that reading for meaning in both Chinese and English involves activation of pronunciations. Now the question becomes how the rapid events of word identification unfold in a fraction of a second from graphic input to pronunciation and meaning. What differences and similarities occur across the two writing systems? Are there differences in their visual processing demands? In the route from graphic form to meaning? These questions will be addressed in studies of Event Related Potentials (ERP), the electrical activity of the brain that can provide information about the time course of word reading events. The project will also include fMRI studies to add more specific information about underlying brain structures used in reading Chinese compared with those used in reading English. In addition, the project will study the important question of how a learner comes to acquire reading skill in a second writing system. American students learning to read Chinese will be studied in a range of behavioral and ERP tasks that will provide information on the course of learning and on some of the brain activities associated with this new learning.