THE INFORMATION PROCESSING OF KANJI, KANA SCRIPT: THE EFFECTS OF DATA-DRIVEN AND CONCEPTUALLY-DRIVEN PROCESSING ON READING

The main purpose of this study was to compare the reading processes of Kanji with those of Kana script. The hypotheses upon which these Exps. were based are as follows: the meaning of both Kanji and Kana script are extracted by both data-driven and conceptually-driven processing. In the reading of Kanji, however, their pronunciations seem to be generated on the basis of their meaning. On the other hand, while the reading of a sequence of Kana script seems to be generated on the basis of meaning as with Kanji, it is directly constructed from data-driven processing since forty-six syllabics correspond to forty-six phonetic units. Subjects were required to read Kanji or Kana script as fast as they could. The results of these Exps. seem to support the above hypotheses.