Time course of Chinese compound word recognition as revealed by ERP data

Previous studies have yielded conflicting results regarding the onset of semantic processing in compound word recognition. This study examined the role of semantics in morphological processing using event-related potentials (ERP) recorded for Chinese compound targets primed by W+M+, W-M+, W-M- (W = whole-word semantics, M = morpheme meaning, + = congruent, and - = incongruent), semantically related and unrelated primes. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 of a masked priming lexical-decision task (SOA = 50 ms), EEG results demonstrated that the brain was sensitive to semantic information as early as between 100 and 250 ms. In Experiment 2 of an unmasked priming lexical-decision task (SOA = 200 ms), data confirmed early semantic access. The two EEG experiments also showed that the semantics of constituent morphemes may have little bearing on compound recognition. Overall, these results seem to converge with a form-and-meaning account of compound recognition.