In Chinese orthography, phonetic compounds comprise about 80% of the most frequent characters. They contain separate phonological and semantic elements, referred to as phonetic and semantic radicals respectively. A dominant type exists in which the se-mantic radical appears on the left and the phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); an opposite, minority structure also exists in which the semantic radical appears on the right and the phonetic radical on the left (PS characters). Through statistical analyses, connectionist modelling, behavioural experiments, and neuroimaging studies, this dis-sertation demonstrates that the distinct structures of these two types of characters allow us crucial insights into the relationship between brain structure and reading processes. The statistical analyses of a Chinese lexical database show that, because of the different information profiles of SP and PS characters and the imbalanced distribution between them in the lexicon, the overall information is skewed to the right. This information skew provides important opportunities to examine the interaction between foveal split-ting and the information structure of the characters. The foveal splitting hypothesis as-sumes a vertical meridian split in the foveal representation and the consequent contra-lateral projection to the two cerebral hemispheres; it has been shown to have important implications for visual word recognition. The square shape and the condensed structure of Chinese characters make them a severe test case for the split fovea claim. Through a lateralized cueing examination and a TMS study of the semantic radical combinability effect with foveally presented characters in character semantic judgements, a flexible division of labour between the hemispheres in character recognition is demonstrated, with each hemisphere responding optimally to the information in the contralateral visual hemifield. The interaction between stimulation site and radical combinability in the TMS study also provides further support for the split fovea claim, suggesting functional foveal splitting as a universal processing constraint in reading. Even if foveal splitting is true, it is still unclear about how far the effects of foveal split-ting can extend from the retina into the process of character recognition. We show that, in naming isolated, foveally presented SP and PS characters, adult male and female readers process them differently, with opposite patterns of ease and difficulty: males responded significantly faster to SP than PS characters; females showed a non-significant tendency in the opposite direction. This result is also supported by a corre-sponding ERP study showing larger N350 amplitude elicited by PS character than SP characters in the male brain, and an opposite pattern in the female brain. The split fovea claim suggests that the two halves of a centrally fixated character are initially processed in different hemispheres. The male brain typically relies more on the left hemisphere for phonological processing compared with the female brain, causing this gender difference to emerge. This interaction is also predicted by an implemented computational model, contrasting a split cognitive architecture, in which the mapping between orthography to phonology is mediated by two partially encapsulated, interconnected processing do-mains, and a non-split cognitive architecture, in which the mapping is mediated by a single, undifferentiated processing domain. Thus, the effects of foveal splitting in read-ing extend far enough to interact with the gender of the reader in a naturalistic reading task. In short, this dissertation demonstrates that foveal splitting is a universal language proc-essing phenomenon, precise enough to project the two radicals of a centrally-fixated Chinese character to different hemispheres to allow a flexible division of labour be-tween the two hemispheres to emerge, and its effects in reading extend far enough into word recognition to interact with the gender of the reader in a naturalistic reading task. The results can also be extrapolated to Chinese word and sentence processing as well as to other languages. This dissertation thus has contributed to a better understanding of the relationship between brain structure and language processes.

Learner’s processing styles may play a vital role in their approach to learning, more specifically; the ability to make inferences plays an important role in all areas of language and learning and may contribute to difficulties learners are experiencing at school. It is therefore that the research was directed at investigating a possible relationship between the left hemispheric analytical and right hemispheric holistic processing styles and the types of errors inferential versus literal, made in reading comprehension tasks. The hemispheric processing styles were operationalised as the approach taken to the Rey- Osterreith Complex Figure (ROCF) and the types of errors made on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) across two levels of educational development. The sample consisted of grade 4 and grade 10 model C learners from the same schooling district. The data obtained from both assessments were subjected to correlation analyses, chi squared tests, analyses of variances (ANOVAs) and logistic regressions. Finally the results and associative conclusions indicated that there were only modest positive relationships between the predominant hemispheric processing styles and the error types on reading comprehension tasks and the demographics of the learners were the main contributors and accounted for the results discovered in the study as opposed to general hemispheric processing. Thus there is a need to understand the unique dynamics within the country and to explore alternatives to teaching practices to account for the variations evident in the classrooms.

本文透過操弄雙字詞詞首的語意(sense)多寡和左右視野，試圖探討中文雙字詞的語意表徵和左右大腦對於多意詞(polysemy)的處理機制。實驗一顯示的左右腦結果和Pylkkänen等人在2006年的MEG研究相似，也就是左腦的多意詞促進效果，支持多意詞單一表徵的型態；然而，右腦卻呈現多意詞抑制的效果。這樣的現象產生兩者可能解釋：(1) 右腦還是屬於單一語意表徵，但由於右半腦處理語意的特性，導致和左腦得到不同的結果；(2)右腦的結果是來自於右腦屬於語意多重表徵(separate entries)的因素。為了要釐清這些說法，實驗二進一步的改變作業深度，讓受試者做詞類判斷作業，企圖讓受試者進行比較深層的語意處理。實驗二結果顯示，在改變作業深度之後，我們的確得到右腦語意促進效果，所以證明右腦的語意屬於單一表徵，在比較深層作業處理階段，因為左右腦處理語意的特性，使得右腦有機會呈現實驗預期的結果。另外，在動詞、名詞事後分析的結果中，我們也發現動詞、名詞的語意效果在大腦有不同的分布區位。名詞的語意效果分布在大腦中間偏後的位置；動詞則是主要分布在大腦前額一帶 總結以上發現，本研究的發現支持過去學者所提出的多意詞單一表徵的說法；第二、本研究對左右半腦處理語意特性，也符合過去的假設，也就是左腦擅長主要、細微的辨識，右腦則擅長維持次要、普遍語意。第三、本研究額外的發現是，動詞、名詞的語意效果在大腦有不同的分布，意味著不同的詞類在大腦可能有不同的表徵。 / Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………iv Tables…………….……………………………………………………………ix Figures …………………………………………………………………………x Chinese Abstract …………………………………………………………xii English Abstract ………………………………………………………xiii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………..……1 1.1 What are senses? Homonymy vs. Polysemy …………………….1 1.2 English words vs. Chinese compounds ………………………….3 1.3 Hemispheric processing of semantic ambiguity ……………4 2. REVIEW OF RELATED PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH ………………6 2.1 Neighborhood size effect in English …………………………6 2.2 Neighborhood frequency effect …………………………….……9 2.3 Event-related potentials (ERPs) vs. neighborhood size effect....11 2.3.1 Event-related potentials ………………………………….11 2.3.2 The advantages of electrophysiological techniques …12 2.3.3 Language-related ERP components ……………………….…12 2.3.4 The neighborhood size effect and. ERPs ……………..14 2.4 Neighborhood size effect in Chinese ……………………….16 2.5 Lexical ambiguity in English—homonymy vs. polysemy……… 22 2.5.1 Mixed results of ambiguity effects ………………………23 2.5.2 Polysemy—separate entries or single entry? …………25 2.5.3Some evidence for single entry hypothesis of senses…27 2.6 Lexical ambiguity in Chinese …………………….……………26 2.7 Hemispheric asymmetry in lexicon processing ……………33 3. EXPERIMENT 1 ………………………………………………………………38 3.1 Experiment 1... ..……………………………………….….....39 3.1.1 Participants …………………………………………………………39 3.1.2 Materials ……………………………………………………………39 3.1.3 Procedure ……………………………………………………………40 3.2 EEG recording parameters …………………………………………41 3.3 EEG data analysis procedure …………………………….....42 3.4 Results ……………………………………………………………………43 3.4.1 Behavioral data of sense effect ……………………………43 3.4.2 Behavioral data of lexicality effect ……………………44 3.4.3 Event-related potentials ………………………………….…45 N170 (150- 180 ms) …………………………………………………46 Frontal P200 (220-260 ms) …………………………………….……47 N400 …………………………………………………………………48 3.5 Discussion ……………………………………………………………51 4. EXPERIMENT 2 ……………………………………………………………57 4.1 Experiment 2 …………………………………………………………58 4.1.1 Participants ………………………………………………………58 4.1.2 Materials …………………………………………………………58 4.1.3 Procedure ……………………………………………………………59 4.2 Results …………………………………………………………………60 4.2.1 Behavioral data ……………………………………………………60 4.2.2 ERP data ……………………………………………………………61 N170 (150-180 ms) ………………………………………………....62 Frontal P200 (220-260 ms) …………………………………………63 N400 (350-500 ms) …………………………………………………63 4.3 Discussion …………………………………………………………………….65 Nouns and verbs ………………………………………………………67 4.4 Re-analyses …………………………………………………………69 4.4.1 Behavioral data ……………………………………………………69 4.4.2 ERP data ……………………………………………………………....71 Nouns …………………………………………………………………71 Verbs …………………………………………………………………74 4.5 Discussion 2 ………………………………………………………77 5. GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ………………………81 5.1 Separate entries or single entry? …………………………81 5.2 Hemispheric processing of polysemy in different depth of tasks ………....82 5.3 Nouns and verbs ………………………………………………………84 5.4 Conclusions …………………………………………………………….85 References ……………………………………………….……………………86 Appendixes ………………………………………………………….…….94 / The current study used the manipulation of visual field and the number of senses of the first character in Chinese disyllabic compounds to investigate the representation of senses and the hemispheric processing of semantic polysemy. The ERP results in experiment 1 revealed crossover patterns in the LH and RH, which resembled the MEG data in Pylkkänen et al.’s study (2006). The sense facilitation in the LH was in favor of the assumption of single entry representation for senses. However, the inhibition in the RH yielded two possible interpretations: (1) the nature of hemispheric processing in dealing with semantic ambiguity; (2) the semantic activation from the separate-entry representation for senses. To clarify these possibilities, the depth of the task was changed. Experiment 2 was designed to push subjects to a deeper level of lexical processing through the word class judgment task. The results revealed the sense facilitation effect in the RH and suggested that in a deeper level, the RH had more possibility to observe the sense facilitation due to different efficiency of cerebral hemispheres in dealing with ambiguity. By chance, planned comparisons of the sense effect in different word classes suggested different distributions of the sense effects for nouns and verbs. For nouns, the sense effects were located in central-to-parietal areas while for verbs, the sense effects mainly were from the frontal area. In sum, the current study was in support of the account of single entry representation for senses, which was consistent with previous findings proposed by Beretta et al. (2005), Pylkkänen et al. (2006), and Rodd et al. (2002). Second, the research demonstrated that cerebral hemispheres played a role in semantic activation in a complementary way in which the LH was engaged in fine and focused semantic coding while the RH was more sophisticated in coarse coding and maintaining alternate meanings (e. g. Beeman & Chiarello, 1998; Burgess and Simpson, 1988). When the depth of tasks was changed, the RH advantage for the processing of semantically related senses was observed. Third, different distributions of the sense effects for nouns and verbs implied the distinct representations for different parts of speech in the brain.