pharaun Wrote:ruiner Wrote:A huge rambling post!
I haven't had the chance yet to go digging through the links provided but from what I was able to understand from this post was that:
Kanji -> eyeball -> brain -> word/concept/meaning
--vs--
Latin Letters -> eyeball -> brain -> word/concept/meaning
Brain - Basically from the post if I'm understanding it right, its saying that Kanji is processed by the brain more like icons/graphics to "meaning/concept" as opposite to the parsing/processing of the serial Latin letters to "meaning/concept"... I probably butchered that but is that the general gist of it?
So once the Latin letters & Kanji are processed into a "meaning/concept" form, we understand them both the same?
I'd say that works, if we aren't talking about phonology as well in parallel. Of course, we must first invest the meaning into the kanji by learning it in words/etc., we must learn the kanji well via radicals, and there is constant cross-script (kanji/kana) priming and interference, etc.
Back when I was still 'fresh' with this stuff, I wrote a couple longish summaries of my interpretations:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...9#pid81579
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...0#pid81390 (from 'Now from the article')
"... The fact that only kanji reading was impaired and not kana suggests that these two sets of characters are processed in a non-identical manner in the brain. In Japanese orthography, each kana letter has a single phonological value but does not evoke semantic connotations. Kanji characters, on the contrary, are associated with semantic entities and their pronunciation usually depends on the context."
"Our finding that reading of phonetic entities (kana) is intact while reading of semantic ones (kanji) is impaired under electric stimulation of the BTLA clearly shows that morphograms and syllabograms are processed in different pathways. Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 4, copying was not impaired for either kanji or kana, suggesting that the difference observed is not caused simply by what the subject saw, but by how her brain processed what was seen depending on the type of task."
"Our study using electric stimulation as a direct method provides clear evidence that, in Japanese, the semantic and the phonetic aspect of kanji are processed in different pathways, not identical to each other."
"Since the electrodes in our study covered the inferior temporal area, it is postulated that kanji is processed in the ventral pathway. Although the dorsal pathway was not studied here, kana may be processed in the dorsal pathway because both the alphabet and kana represent sound."
"As discussed in the previous sections, some words in Japanese have a strong conceptual and/or cultural association among certain groups. Therefore, when the patient conceptually understood a kanji word while failing to match it with the correct phonological representation, it is highly likely that a false representing sound comes from one of the words in such a group instead of the sound of a word totally unrelated to the correct one. A good example is the session in which a test item (pronounced as ‘ma-tsu’, meaning a pine tree) was mistakenly called as ‘ta-ke’ (written as , meaning bamboo) under electric stimulation. Both are familiar and typical in the picturesque scenery of the countryside or in traditional Japanese gardens."
"Although the two separate terms are used for paraphasia observed in kanji reading and picture naming in this study, both involve the conceptual understanding (or semantic information in a broad sense) of what the patient sees and their representing sounds. It can safely be assumed, therefore, that the process and mechanism involved here for errors in kanji reading and picture naming are identical, and the only difference is the origin of a false representing sound, i.e. a culturally connected group of words in the case of kanji reading versus the name of object which was presented just before in the case of picture naming.
Based on the fact that both kanji reading and picture naming were impaired by electric stimulation in almost the same way, the study provides a clear understanding of how these two distinctly different functions, reading words and naming objects, are processed in a similar manner in the brain. The results here strongly indicate that one of the func tions of the left posterior basal temporal area is the conversion of visual stimuli carrying semantic information into their phonological representations."
"Our study using direct electric stimulation significantly improves the understanding of what is strongly related to multiplicity of domains and/or systems involved in the processing architecture in the brain."
Or from the Gestaltzerfall article, a snippet: "... These results suggest that a Kanji pattern may be internally represented as a whole, independent of its size, while the processing of Kanji structure may be dependent upon its size. Prolonged viewing may produce an adaptation effect specific to such representations."
From the 'personal visual cognition' article: "The experiment revealed that learners' way of visually deconstructing kanji is impacted; learners gradually gain the
skill to perceive a kanji in fewer and fewer numbers of
blocks, following the iconicity principle, moving towards
single unit visualization. This is congruent with the concept
that the strength of learners’ ability to recognize kanji is
attributed to iconicity, converging with the distinctive
number of blocks that form the kanji [9],[10]. "
For further breakdown of some of these reading models, and the notion of 'imageability':
http://www.mathematicalbrain.com/pdf/SEMANTIC.pdf
Another:
http://nbr.physiol.ox.ac.uk/papers/anyas08.pdf - "We found that Kana literacy performance
was significantly predicted by low-level sensory processing (both auditory frequency
modulation sensitivity and visual motion sensitivity) as well as phonological aware-
ness, but not by visual memory. This result is largely consistent with previous studies
in other phonographic scripts such as English. In contrast, Kanji literacy performance
was strongly predicted by visual memory (particularly visual long-term memory), but
not by either low-level sensory processing or phonological awareness. Our results show
differences in the skills that predict literacy performance in phonographic Kana and
logographic Kanji, as well as providing experimental evidence that visual memory is
important when learning Kanji."
More on the DRC model with diagram, for letters:
http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/~ssaunder/DRC/
This is a good overview (by a proponent not of DRC but interactivation theory or PDP or something):
http://ir.lib.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/meta-bin...d=00000270 (full but here's abstract): "In the present study on a review on Kana and Kanji processing, the historical background of psychological studies on Kana and Kanji is described to understand how the interactive activation models were developed as a universal explanation for language processing. The early studies on Kana and Kanji script in the 1960s are discussed in the framework of evolutional theories which focused only on the script capability of phonological representations. In the 1970s, studies of Japanese dyslexia found distinct phonological and orthographic routes to assess the mental lexicon by Kana and Kanji. In the early 1980s, neurological studies revealed that the nature of linguistic tasks resulted in a shift of hemispheric specification. In the late 1980s, psychological studies proposed the intricate model that Kana and Kanji processing interactively involve both phonological and orthographic processing. This further developed in the 1990s as the interactive activation (IA) theory and the parallel distributed processing (PDP) theory."
From 'Word Recognition Depends on Script':
http://people.tamu.edu/~jvaid/labweb/Mat...id2005.pdf (another study with nice layout on dual route model)
From:
http://reference.kfupm.edu.sa/content/n/..._97687.pdf - "Left inferior frontal cortex also mediated Chinese processing.
In addition, more right hemisphere cortical regions
(i.e., BAs 47/45, 7, 40/39, and the right visual system)
were involved in reading Chinese relative to reading
English. This is attributed to the square shape of the
logograph which requires an elaborated analysis of
the spatial information and locations of various
strokes comprising the logographic character.We sug-
gest that the left middle frontal area (BA 9) coordi-
nates and integrates the intensive visuospatial analy-
sis demanded by logographs’ square configuration and
the semantic (or phonological) analysis required by
the present experimental tasks. Our study has impli-
cated brain regions common to both logographic and
alphabetic languages as well as brain regions special-
ized in processing logographs...
... We believe that the extremely strong activation of
the left middle frontal gyrus in reading Chinese is
associated with the unique square configuration of
logographs. Unlike English words that have a linear
structure, Chinese logographs comprise a number of
strokes that are packed into a square shape according
to stroke assembly rules. This requires fine-grained
analyses of the visual-spatial locations of the strokes
and subcharacter components. Recent data from func-
tional imaging studies suggest that the left middorsal
lateral frontal cortex (at BAs 9 and 46) mediates spa-
tial and verbal working memory by which the subject
maintains a limited amount of spatial and verbal in-
formation in an active state for a brief period of time
(0–60 s) (Courtney et al., 1998; McCarthy et al., 1994;
Owen et al., 1996; Paulesu et al., 1993). More specifi-
cally, this region may act as a central executive system
of working memory that is responsible for coordination
of cognitive resources (D’Esposito et al., 1995). In our
present study, although working memory processes
may not be engaged in character decision (Perfetti and
Zhang, 1995), the subject indeed needed to coordinate
the semantic (or phonological) processing of the Chi-
nese logographs that was explicitly required by the
experimental task and the intensive visuospatial pro-
cessing that was demanded by the visual form of logo-
graphs. In this case, the left middle frontal gyrus may
be recruited to integrate these two cognitive processes... " (It goes on but formatting here's all messed up, so I'll stop there)
Bonus: Radicals not stroke order affecting recall of kanji:
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~ktamaoka...TY2000.pdf
visual motion sensitivity and literacy skills in japanese:
http://www2.tmig.or.jp/CNP/pastcnp/PDFs2005/5-2.pdf -"... In addition, Kana literacy development was best predicted by phonological short-term memory for nonwords, followed by orthographic processing. Kanji learning seemed to depend on multiple cognitive modalities, phonological, orthographic and visual domains. This result may reflect the nature of Kanji, which is visually more complex than Kana and needs to be pronounced at the whole-word orthographic level according to the context... with reading development in English (Pickering, in personal communication), may be a necessary cognitive component for learning Kanji, but not for leaning Kana. This multi-modal involvement in
Kanji literacy skills reflects the properties of Kanji script, which is visually complex and needs to be read at the word-specific orthographic level due to multiple phonological representations for each character. ... In addition, learning Kanji, but not Kana, seems to also depend on visual short-term memory, suggesting the greater importance of visual processing skills in Kanji than in Kana. "
orthographic satiation/gestaltzerfall of kanji -
http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/18...ion_NC.pdf - ". Hence, the locus of
orthographic satiation should lie at a higher cognitive level such as character
recognition, instead of being a purely perceptual phenomenon. The null effect of input
mode does not contradict that binocular disparity involves processing at many levels
(Lee, 2004), but suggests that unlike orthographic satiation, the effect of binocular disparity lies at lower level processing rather than high level processing... In sum, our results suggest that orthographic satiation is a higher cognitive event,
which involves gestalt perception of Chinese characters. The reported satiation time in
our study and in previous research (Cheng & Wu, 1994; Ninose & Gyoba, 1996) is all
about 30 seconds, indicating that this phenomenon is genuine. Therefore, two
nteresting issues then are raised: Why orthographic satiation is only observed in Chinese characters? What is the mechanism underlying this effect? (pp.65-6+) " - This is a really nice breakdown of character discrimination. Also see discussions of differences from alphabet.
"Thus, it seems reasonable to speculate
that some very common words in English (e.g., the) are represented and accessed as
iconic wholes. Nevertheless, Pelli, Farell, and Moore (2003) found that even in identifying the most three-letter familiar English words (e.g., the), readers were unable to recognize the word if each letter was presented by parts. The result that a word was readable only if its letters were separately identifiable indicates that even the most common words are not stored as an iconic whole. The human performance in their results is consistent with the letter-based word identification models, which suggests that letter is the most efficient level of representation, at least in alphabetic languages. The findings of Pelli et al. (2003) and the orthographic redundancy of alphabetic scripts (e.g., only 26 letters in English) indicate that words are recognized on the basis of letters, rather than as wholes, in alphabetic languages. ... Therefore, in Chinese, the immediate representations to access are stroke patterns/ radicals, or characters. Together with the visual characteristics of Chinese characters, these unique properties make them easier to be iconic representations. Hence, Chinese character identification may involve the processes of chunking particular components (or radicals) together. The more certain radicals (or stroke patterns) are chunked together, the more they are perceived as a whole (as an integrated character)... The mechanism underlying satiation may involve the binding inside the character that keeps the radicals together as a whole. Maintaining the gestalt figural representation of a character thus depends on the degree of its radicals to bind with other radicals (or stroke patterns). If a given character has radicals with high combinability, it means that their radicals can bind with many other radicals to form different characters, which is likely to decrease the binding inside that character; thus lowers the gestalt quality of the whole character. Even for simple characters (e.g., ), its single stroke pattern can be conceptualized as having a zero binding. The zero binding indicates a high gestalt nature of simple characters, which according to our gestalt hypothesis, should be less susceptible to satiation. This is also consistent with Cheng and Wu’s (1994) finding that simple characters were slower to satiate. "
From the 'subliminal convergence' pdf: "Regardless of their script type,
visual words produced left-predominant activation of
the peri-sylvian areas, fronto-parietal junction, and occi-
pito-temporal area relative to the word-absent baseline.
These activation sites were distributed quite similarly for
both types of script (Figure 2).
Activations that differ according to script type are
illustratedinFigure3andsummarizedinTables2
and 3. Within the set of brain regions activated by Kanji
targets, only a small bilateral region in the fusiform gyrus
responded more greatly when target words were pre-
sented in Kanji than in Kana, particularly in the right
hemisphere. Conversely, target words in Kana relative to
those in Kanji exhibited activation of the bilateral occip-
ital pole and left inferior parietal area including the
supramarginal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule. In
contrast, no region in this neural circuit responded
more greatly to subliminal primes in Kanji relative to
those in Kana, while conversely the left inferior parietal
lobule exhibited greater response to the latter relative to
the former.
In the set of brain areas activated by Kana targets,
visible targets and subliminal primes in Kanji each
produced no significant activation relative to their equiv-
alents in Kana. Targets in Kana relative to those in Kanji
activated the bilateral occipital pole, the left lateral
occipital cortex, and the left inferior parietal area,
whereas similarly subliminal primes in Kana activated
the left inferior parietal lobule and thalamus relative to
those in Kanji...
... The close linkage of Kanji and semantics in the left basal temporal cortex is supported
by neuropsychological studies of alexia in Japanese
readers. Those studies confirm that damage to the left
inferior temporal area can affect the reading of Kanji
while leaving that of Kana almost intact, and further
demonstrate this particular form of alexia often appears
in conjunction with anomia (Sakurai, Sakai, Sakuta, &
Iwata, 1994; Yokota, Ishiai, Furukawa, & Tsukagoshi,
1990; Soma, Sugishita, Kitamura, Maruyama, & Imanaga,
1989; Kawahata, Nagata, & Shishido, 1988). This may
ref lect the fact that naming of objects and reading of
Kanji both place a particular emphasis on semantic
access prior to phonological retrieval...
... the more extensive activation of the
right fusiform area by Kanji than by Kana may represent
a neuroanatomical substrate of the long-standing hy-
pothesis of a right hemisphere advantage in processing
of Kanji. Their logographic nature was long thought to
allow readers to extract meaning directly from their
written forms without the mediation of phonological
recoding. The rightward asymmetry for the recognition
of Kanji has been suggested by several lines of studies,
including behavioral (Nakagawa, 1994; Hatta, 1977; Sa-
sanuma et al., 1977), neuropsychological (Sugishita
& Yoshioka, 1987; Sugishita, Yoshioka, et al., 1986),
electrophysiological (Yamaguchi et al., 2002; Hayashi,
Kayamoto, Tanaka, & Yamada, 1998), and magneto-
encephalographic (Kamada et al., 1998) data. Although
these studies have located the right-predominant activity
in different brain regions, such as fronto-central (Yama-
guchi et al., 2002), parietal (Hayashi, et al., 1998), and
occipito-temporal cortices (Kamada, et al., 1998), the
present fMRI results suggest that the hemispheric spe-
cialization differs between the two scripts early in the
ventral visual pathway...
In the converse direction, there were a few regions
where Kana yielded greater activation than Kanji. First,
reading of Kana relative to Kanji produced activation in
bilateral retinotopic areas around the occipital pole ( y ~
90 mm) and in the left anterior lateral occipital area
( y = 74 mm). Both differences are likely to arise from
the slight asymmetry in retinal size between the two
scripts. Second, visual words in Kana, not only targets
but also primes, activated the left inferior parietal lobe
more than those in Kanji. A body of neuropsychological
and neuroimaging data have associated this region,
especially the left supramarginal gyrus, with the transla-tion from orthography to phonology (e.g., Price, 1998;
Price, Moore, Humphreys, & Wise, 1997). The left pa-
rietal activation may also relate to the deployment of
visuospatial attentional processes that are needed to
serially assemble phonology from the spatially extended
series of characters that together represent a word.
Under both of these interpretations, the greater re-
sponse to Kana at this location would ref lect the greater
use of phonological decoding that has been postulated
for Kana over Kanji (Nomura, 1981). If this interpreta-
tion is correct, interestingly, our findings suggest that
the neural processes for converting orthography to pho-
nology may proceed to a certain extent even in the ab-
sence of awareness (see below for further discussion)... The most notable effect is
that different scripts put a differential emphasis on
phonological versus lexico-semantic routes, as previous-
ly suggested by comparisons of brain activations in
readers of Italian or English (Paulesu et al., 2000)."
on kanji/kana field of vision/fixations+saccades/vertical writing/blah blah:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...4#pid92634
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