The interaction between semantic and sublexical routes in reading: Converging evidence from Chinese

The classic dual route model for reading (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) assumes at least two independent routes from printed input to sound: one via a lexical-semantic pathway and one via a nonlexical pathway which relies on a process of graphemephoneme-conversion (GPC) and leads to an effect of regularity on reading. However, there is evidence from brain-damaged patients that these pathways are not fully independent but instead interact (Hillis & Caramazza, 1995). Although in some patients, impairment prevents either of these routes from independently producing the correct response for a target, the imperfect activation from both routes may summate onto the target leading to a correct response. Weekes Chen, and Yin (1997) reported that oral reading in Chinese can proceed via an independent pathway that bypasses lexical-semantic knowledge. Weekes and Chen (1999) argued this pathway does not support reading of low imageability, low frequency irregular characters resulting in an effect of regularity on reading. This sublexical process on oral reading in Chinese differs from the process of GPC in alphabetic languages. A Chinese character can be considered regular if it contains a visual component (phonetic radical) that can be an independent lexical item with the same pronunciation as the whole character. A character is consistent if all characters containing this phonetic radical have the same pronunciation. Sublexical regularity and consistency play a role in character reading independent of lexical factors in studies with normal (Hue, 1992) and aphasic groups (e.g., Weekes & Chen, 1999). We focus here on the reading of a patient, WJX, who suffers from dementia and who made semantic errors in comprehension and production. His reading ability was well preserved, even for many irregular/inconsistent characters. Our question was what reading process can account for his good reading performance? Case description and results