The Chinese Lexicon Project: A megastudy of lexical decision performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character compound words.

Using a megastudy approach, we developed a database of lexical variables and lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character compound words. Each word was responded to by about 33 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. This resource provides a valuable adjunct to influential mega-databases, such as the Chinese single-character, English, French, and Dutch Lexicon Projects. Three analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential uses of the database. First, we compared the proportion of variance in lexical decision performance accounted for by six word frequency measures and established that the best predictor was Cai and Brysbaert's (PLoS One, 5, e10729, 2010) contextual diversity subtitle frequency. Second, we ran virtual replications of three previously published lexical decision experiments and found convergence between the original experiments and the present megastudy. Finally, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the effects of theoretically important lexical variables in our normative data. This is the first publicly available large-scale repository of behavioral responses pertaining to Chinese two-character compound word processing, which should be of substantial interest to psychologists, linguists, and other researchers.

Evaluating the Training Effects of Two Swallowing Rehabilitation Therapies Using Surface Electromyography--Chin Tuck Against Resistance (CTAR) Exercise and the Shaker Exercise.

In this study, the efficacy of two dysphagia interventions, the Chin Tuck against Resistance (CTAR) and Shaker exercises, were evaluated based on two principles in exercise science-muscle-specificity and training intensity. Both exercises were developed to strengthen the suprahyoid muscles, whose contractions facilitate the opening of the upper esophageal sphincter, thereby improving bolus transfer. Thirty-nine healthy adults performed two trials of both exercises in counter-balanced order. Surface electromyography (sEMG) recordings were simultaneously collected from suprahyoid muscle group and sternocleidomastoid muscle during the exercises. Converging results using sEMG amplitude analyses suggested that the CTAR was more specific in targeting the suprahyoid muscles than the Shaker exercise. Fatigue analyses on sEMG signals further indicated that the suprahyoid muscle group were equally or significantly fatigued (depending on metric), when participants carried out CTAR compared to the Shaker exercise. Importantly, unlike during Shaker exercise, the sternocleidomastoid muscles were significantly less activated and fatigued during CTAR. Lowering the chin against resistance is therefore sufficiently specific and intense to fatigue the suprahyoid muscles.

The Chinese Lexicon Project: a repository of lexical decision behavioral responses for 2,500 Chinese characters.

The Chinese language has more native speakers than any other language, but research on the reading of Chinese characters is still not as well-developed as it is for the reading of words in alphabetic languages. Two areas notably lacking are the paucity of megastudies in Chinese and the relatively infrequent use of the lexical decision paradigm to investigate single-character recognition. The Chinese Lexicon Project, described in this article, is a database of lexical decision latencies for 2,500 Chinese single characters in simplified script, collected from a sample of native mainland Chinese (Mandarin) speakers (N = 35). This resource will provide a valuable adjunct to influential mega-databases, such as the English, French, and Dutch Lexicon Projects. Using two separate analyses, some advantages associated with megastudies are exemplified. These include the selection of the strongest measure to represent Chinese character frequency (Cai & Brysbaert's (PLoS ONE 5(6): e10729, 2010) subtitle contextual diversity frequency count), and the conducting of virtual studies to replicate and clarify existing findings. The unique morpho-syllabic nature of the Chinese writing system makes it a valuable case study for functional language contrasts. Moreover, this is the first publicly available large-scale repository of behavioral responses pertaining to Chinese language processing (the behavioral dataset is attached to this article, as a supplemental file available for download). For these reasons, the data should be of substantial interest to psychologists, linguists, and other researchers.

The role of lexical variables in the visual recognition of Chinese characters: A megastudy analysis.

Logographic Chinese orthography partially represents both phonology and semantics. By capturing the online processing of a large pool of Chinese characters, we were able to examine the relative salience of specific lexical variables when this nonalphabetic script is read. Using a sample of native mainland Chinese speakers (N = 35), lexical decision latencies for 1560 single characters were collated into a database, before the effects of a comprehensive range of variables were explored. Hierarchical regression analyses determined the unique item-level variance explained by orthographic (frequency, stroke count), semantic (age of learning, imageability, number of meanings), and phonological (consistency, phonological frequency) factors. Orthographic and semantic variables, respectively, accounted for more collective variance than the phonological variables. Significant main effects were further observed for the individual orthographic and semantic predictors. These results are consistent with the idea that skilled readers tend to rely on orthographic and semantic information when processing visually presented characters. This megastudy approach marks an important extension to existing work on Chinese character recognition, which hitherto has relied on factorial designs. Collectively, the findings reported here represent a useful set of empirical constraints for future computational models of character recognition.