Psychological Development and Education ›› 2026, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (2): 212-221.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2026.02.07

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The Influence of Grading Black and Serial Presenting Characters on Transposed-character Effect

ZHANG Yancui1,2, SUN Yue1, WANG Jingxin1   

  1. 1. Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387;
    2. College of Humanities, Tianjin Agricultural University, Tianjin 300392
  • Published:2026-03-14

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Abstract: In alphabetic languages, the influence of visual factors such as grading black and serially presenting letters within words, on the transposed-letter effect has gained the attention in relevant studies. However, whether the transposed-character effect is modulated by these visual factors remains unclear. In this study, we conducted two experiments using a single-presentation lexical decision task with real words, transposed-character pseudowords, and substituted-letter pseudowords, manipulating the visual features of the stimuli. In Experiment 1, the characters within words were either monochromatic or grading black. In Experiment 2, the characters were presented either simultaneously or serially, character by character. The results showed that grading black characters did not significantly modulate the transposed-character effect, while serial presentation of characters significantly reduced the transposed-character effect. This is likely due to the increased flexibility in character identity processing under this condition, which reflects the unique characteristics of the Chinese character system. The stable presence of the transposed-character effect suggests that it may be primarily influenced by linguistic factors. These findings will promote the development of related theories like the core processing mechanism of Chinese reading and the Chinese reading model, as well as will provide important insights for improving the learning efficiency of Chinese vocabulary recognition and reading comprehension.

Key words: Chinese, characters, transposed-character effect, identity information, position information, visual factors

CLC Number: 

  • G442
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