論文ID: 90.18305
This study explored the effects of the semantics of first-constituent kanji characters on semantic processing of Japanese two-kanji words and examined the processing order of the two constituent characters. We used a semantic categorization task in which participants judged whether words represented human entities (human words) or not (general words). In half of both types of words, the first kanji character represented a human entity (human characters), while this was not the case in the other half. Initial human characters had inhibitory effects on the semantic categorization of general words and facilitatory effects on the semantic categorization of human words. In addition, considering that no facilitatory effects were found for second human characters in Mizuno and Matsui (2018), it seems that semantic processing of initial human characters finishes earlier than processing of kanji words, thereby facilitating their semantic processing. Processing of second human characters, meanwhile, finishes almost simultaneously with that of kanji words and does not facilitate semantic processing. This suggests that semantic processing proceeds from the first to the second character.