Examining two extreme cases of kanji recognition by Japanese using magnetoencephalography

This paper reports two extreme cases of kanji recognition by Japanese participants using magnetoencephalography (MEG). MEG is a non-invasive technique to measure magnetic field activities generated by neural activities in the brain. MEG was used to investigate neural activities when participants saw visually presented kanji and other objects. In this study we will report two extreme cases; one, participant A was very good (100% accuracy rate) and the other, participant B was poor (25% accuracy rate) at recognizing Korean characters. In this study five types of stimuli were used. Those are real kanji , pseudo kanji (graphically legal but non-existent), illegal kanji (graphically illegal), Korean characters and picture fonts . Both participant A and B are native speakers of Japanese, female, 20-30s, and received college education in Japan. We compared the magnitudes of M100 components of magnetoencephalogram which are thought to be an indicator of very early visual recognition in the visual field. The magnitudes of M100 for real kanji, pseudo kanji, and illegal kanji did not differ between the two participants. However, the magnitudes of M100 for Korean characters and picture fonts were larger in participant A than participant B. Since both participants received college education at Japanese universities, they were supposed to have good kanji knowledge and operational skills in reading and writing Japanese. No difference in the magnitude of M100 for kanji might be an evidence for the participants’ efficient kanji knowledge. Smaller magnitudes of M100 for Korean characters and picture fonts in participant B might suggest participant B’s poor visual recognition skills in general and correspond to participant B’s poor recognition of Korean characters. There seems to be discrepancy between Korean character/picture font recognition and kanji recognition. One possible explanation is that originally participant B’s visual recognition was not good; however, participant B has obtained good kanji recognition skills through many years of practicing. Developmental research is necessary to answer the question raised by the results of the current study.