Electrophysiological measurements of holistic processing of Chinese characters

Holistic processing (HP) is a marker of perceptual expertise in facial recognition. In the present study, we examined neural responses to the HP of Chinese characters, adopting the composite paradigm. The behavioral results showed that the discrimination of congruent trials was significantly higher than that of incongruent trials, and participants responded faster. Moreover, the congruent trials elicited significantly larger N170 amplitude than the incongruent trials. The HP effect of the N170 component was observed for upright characters, as the configural information of inverted characters and misaligned characters were destroyed. Right-lateralization of processing Chinese characters was observed in the N170 amplitudes and delta-theta band oscillations. The results suggested that Chinese character recognition employed a strategy of HP, and the finding that neural indicators provide a better signal of the strength of HP in Chinese characters than behavioral indicators was also crucial.

Automated summary

In this study, neural responses to holistic processing of Chinese characters were examined using the composite paradigm. The results showed that congruent trials elicited larger N170 amplitudes compared to incongruent trials, indicating a strategy of holistic processing in Chinese character recognition. Additionally, right-lateralization of processing Chinese characters was observed in the N170 amplitudes and delta-theta band oscillations, suggesting that neural indicators may provide a better signal of the strength of holistic processing in Chinese characters than behavioral indicators.