Reading Across Writing Systems: Basic Processes and Learning

该项目的目标是发现阅读的普遍特征以及书写系统影响阅读过程的具体方式。它将侧重于两种高度对比的书写系统的比较，即英语，世界字母书写系统的代表，和汉语，通常被认为是一个独特的符号系统。字母系统使用无意义的图形（字母）作为系统的基本单位，并将这些单位映射到口语中无意义的单位（音素）上。因此，字母b映射到/b/这个音。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。这使得书面汉语可以直接将图形单位与意义联系起来。随着早期汉字具有象形文字内容的事实，这一事实鼓励了汉语阅读不参考语音（音系）的假设。然而，最近的研究，包括佩尔菲蒂目前由美国国家科学基金会资助的研究，发现中文读者使用口语形式，就像字母系统的读者一样。在各种暴露单词识别过程的任务中，中国读者在默读中使用发音。例如，当读者决定词义时，单词的发音会干扰对词义的判断。举个英语例子，当读者被要求判断一件物品是否是一种植物时，他可能会在“flour”这个词上犯错误（或者花更长的时间来做决定），因为这个词和一种植物（“flower”）的发音相同。如果读者可以避免发音，这样的影响就不会发生。在汉语中也发现了类似的结果，这表明汉语和英语的意思阅读都涉及到发音的激活。现在的问题是，单词识别是如何在不到一秒钟的时间内从图形输入到发音和含义展开的。这两种书写系统有什么异同？他们的视觉处理需求有差异吗？在从图形形式到意义的过程中？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的时间过程的信息。该项目还将包括功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究，以增加更多关于阅读中文和阅读英语时使用的潜在大脑结构的具体信息。此外，该项目将研究一个重要的问题，即学习者如何在第二种写作系统中获得阅读技能。学习阅读中文的美国学生将接受一系列行为和ERP任务的研究，这些任务将提供有关学习过程和与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.