Stroke Features in the Chinese character Recognition

Luo F, Zhang Y, Liang W, Blais C, Plouffe Demers MP, Fiset D, Sun D, Chen B.

Abstract

Chinese characters contain three levels of visual information: strokes, radicals, and structures. Stroke, as the basic unit of Chinese characters, is the foundation of the formation of Chinese characters. Some research has shown that strokes can enhance the semantic and orthographic representation in the process of Chinese character acquisition. This shows that the processing of Chinese characters is based on feature processing. This is consistent with the feature processing theory of letter and object recognition. Recent research on visual recognition shows that the recognition of letters and words is based on the termination and the other features (vertices and midsegment) used in object recognition. In this study, we used delayed segment technique on Chinese character recognition to examine the importance of terminations, vertices and midsegment in different masking degree. Experiment 1 selected about 43 high frequency Chinese characters with left-right structures and asked the participants to naming Chinese characters. In experiment 1, we try to examine the importance of terminations, vertices and midsegments based on line unit and consider the degree of masking these features. It was found that the main effect of masking degree was significant. The masking of 35% and 55% of the features makes the RTs significantly longer. The main effect of feature type was significant. Masking vertices and midsegment can make RTs significantly longer. But termination didn’t show its feature effect in experiment 1. When masking these three features (vertices, midsegment and termination) in experiment 1, the features are based on line units, which may destroy the integrity of strokes in Chinese characters. That termination effects couldn’t be obvious in experiment 1 may be caused by this reason. To verify this, in experiment 2, we explore the vertices, midsegment and termination based on stroke units. The results show that the main effect of masking degree was significant, and the RTs were longer by masking 35% and 55% degree. The main effect of feature types was significant. RTs on character recognition are significantly longer by masking the vertices, midsegment and termination. This shows that the vertices, midsegment and termination based on stroke unit are also important in Chinese character recognition. Based on the above research results, it can be seen that the key features on Chinese character recognition are in line with the neuronal recycling hypothesis. According to neuronal recycling hypothesis, human’s ability to learn from culture depends on the retrieval of preexisting brain circuits, and the key features in word recognition may be derived from our key features in object processing. The hook is considered to be a special termination in Chinese characters. The results of experiment 2 also emphasized the key role of hook features in character recognition.