Visual word N170 is an index of perceptual expertise for visual words across different writing systems. Recent developmental studies have shown the early emergence of visual word N170 and its close association with individual's reading ability. In the current study, we investigated whether fine-tuning N170 for Chinese characters could emerge after…

In this experiment we studied statistical learning, inter-trial priming, and visual attention. We assessed healthy controls and right brain damaged (RBD) patients with and without neglect, on a simple visual discrimination task designed to measure priming effects and probability learning. All participants showed a preserved priming effect for item…

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the degree to which people can process words while devoting central attention to another task. Experiments 1-4 measured the N400 effect, which is sensitive to the degree of mismatch between a word and the current semantic context. Experiment 5 measured the P3 difference between…

Bilingual reading can require more than knowing two languages. Learners must acquire also the writing conventions of their second language, which can differ in its deep mapping principles (writing system) and its visual configurations (script). We review ERP (event-related potential) and fMRI studies of both Chinese-English bilingualism and…