The role of attention, inhibition and statistical learning in Chinese character recognition by novices

•We investigated statistical learning in logographic language, in novices.•In addition, we explored the role of attention and inhibition.•This study included a novel online implementation of experimental procedures.•Congruent with our hypotheses, novices displayed statistical learning.•Our results do not support a clear role of attention and inhibition. Statistical learning is a universal learning mechanism and has been extensively studied in alphabetic languages, yet less explored in logographic language. The present study aimed to address this research gap and to assess the role of attention and inhibition in statistical learning. By applying a browser-based experiment tool, statistical learning was measured by an adapted statistical learning paradigm. Attention and inhibition were measured by the Go/No-Go task. 38 non-Chinese participants performed in the study. The results showed that accuracy and response speed was higher for characters with high occurrence probability relative to lower occurrence probability, but this was restricted to whole characters. Our results did not support a significant role of sustained attention and inhibition in relation to task performance. Our findings suggest that statistical learning is a general mechanism underlying Chinese character recognition.