The frequency effects of word and its constituent character in natural silent Chinese reading: Evidences from Electroencephalogram 

Abstract We conducted two experiments to examine the lexical and sublexical processing of Chinese polysyllabic words in reading, by co-registration EEG to the first fixation on target word. The whole-word occurrence frequency and initial constituent character frequency were orthogonally manipulated in Experiment 1, and whole-word occurrence frequency and end constituent character frequency were orthogonally manipulated in Experiment 2. It demonstrated that word frequency facilitated eye-tracking measures, whereas its initial and end character frequency inhibited them. Classical word frequency effects on N170 and N400 in the posterior region, and reversed word frequency effects over the anterior region were consistently observed in both experiments. Experiment 1 revealed an inhibitory effect of initial character frequency on anterior N170, but a faciliatory effect on parietal-occipital N170, and non-reliable interactions. Experiment 2 demonstrated reliable inhibitory effects of end-character frequency on anterior N170 and N400, and that these effects were reduced by word frequency, with smaller inhibitory effects for high frequency words.