Temporal dynamics of the consistency e¡ect in reading Chinese: an event-related potentials study

This study aimed to explore the temporal dynamics of the consistency e¡ect in reading Chinese phonograms. Highconsistency and low-consistency characters were used in the homophone judgment task, and the event-related potentials were recorded. The data showed that low-consistency characters elicited greater N170 amplitude in the temporal^ occipital region and greater P200 amplitude in the frontal region than highconsistency characters, whereas high-consistency characters showedgreater amplitude of theN400 negativity than low-consistency characters. These ¢ndings can be interpreted as indicating that low-consistency characters produce a greater activation for the initial analysis of the orthographical andphonologicalrepresentations, whereas high-consistency characters involve a greater lexical competition in the later stage. NeuroReport 18:147^151 c 2007 LippincottWilliams &Wilkins.