Abstract
This study examined the role of MEG (magnetoencephalography) components, M100 (component at around 100ms after stimulus onset) and M170 (component at around 170ms after stimulus onset)in kanji recognition. It is said that M100 reflects preliminary character analysis and M170 reflects complex character analysis. We scanned MEG signals while participants see Kanji, simplified Chinese characters, Traditional Chinese characters, and Korean characters passively. The participants consist of Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean. M100 was observed in 49 out of 112 participants. In all participants the changes between M100 and M170 in the five stimuli were not parallel. The changing patterns varied greatly from individual to individual. There was no relation between changing patterns and mother languages. It appears that some kind of judgment on a character occurs in a very early, namely perceptual, stage of character recognition and there are grate individual difference in judging characters.
