VISUAL HALF-FIELD RECOGNITION OF CHARACTERS AND ENGLISH WORDS FOR CHINESE AND JAPANESE SUBJECTS
WU-tian Zhang, De-zhuang YANG · PSYCHOLOGIA · 1986
Past research has so far indicated that, with visual half field presentation of ideographic characters, there is right hemispheric superiority (left visual field effects) for Japanese subjects.Other studies have shown opposite laterality effects for Chinese subjects.In the present study, Japanese and Chinese subjects were required to recognize English words and characters presnted either to the right or left visual field.The results showed a right visual field superiority effect for both Chinese and Japanese subiects.Factors that may be responsible for this result are discussed.Many researchers have found right visual field (left hemisphere) superiority effects for normal right-handed people in recognition tasks using alphabetic scripts (e.g.English, Japanese Kana) in tachistoscopic presentations (Bradshaw & Nettleton, 1981;Endo et al., 1978;Hines, 1978).So far, however, there have not been many experiments with ideographic scripts (e.g.Japanese Kanji or Chinese characters) as stimuli.The limited researches, however, have yielded inconsistent results.Hatta (1977) has reported a study with Japanese subjects using Kanji characters of different degrees of familiarity displayed in either the left or right visual field.The results show that recognition in the left visual field is superior to the right.Sasanuma (1977) has also experimented with Japanese subjects using pairs of meaningless Japanese Kanji characters and the results indicate a small but nonsignificant advantage for the left visual field.However, using Chinese characters as stimuli on normal Chinese right-handed subjects, we (Zhang & Peng, 1984, 1985) as well as others (Cheng & Fu, 1984) have obtained right visual field superiorityeffects.What is the reason for the different experimental results for the same kind of ideographs?It is said the reason lies in the fact that Japanese Kanji have hieroglyphic features and the right cerebral hemisphere is superior in recognition of spatial forms.On the other hand, Japanese Kanji is polyphonic.Thus under the conditions of tachistoscopic presentation the Japanese subjects can derive the meaning directly from the Kanji without necessarily going through a phonetic recording of the stimulus.Thus the superiority of the visual field related to the right cerebral hemisphere is prominent.It is true that most Chinese characters are not