Ideographic and Phonographic Languages Share a Common Cognitive Foundation: Evidence from Visual Form Perception

doi:10.12139/j.1672-0628.2025.06.006

Abstract

Abstract:

The visual form perception hypothesis proposes that visual form perception, as a type of domain-general cognitive factor, is the common cognitive basis of abilities of both language and mathematics. This hypothesis has been confirmed in ideograms represented by Chinese, but whether it can be extended to phonetic scripts is unclear. This current study measured the unique contribution of visual form perception (measured by arrow form judgement test) to Chinese, English and mathematical abilities (measured by Chinese sentence completion test, English sentence completion test, and arithmetic computation) of Chinese primary school students. The results showed that after controlling for age, gender, intelligence and processing speed, visual form perception played an independent role in all three abilities. The results indicate that visual form perception is the common cognitive basis of both ideographic and phonographic languages, and further improve the scope of the role of visual form perception in language processing.

Key words: visual form perception, language, ideographic characters, phonographic characters, primary school students

摘要：

形状知觉假说认为作为领域一般性认知因素的形状知觉是语言与数学共有的认知基础，已在以汉语为代表的表意文字中得到证实，但可否扩展至表音文字尚不清楚。本研究检验形状知觉(通过箭头形状判断任务测量)在我国小学生的汉语、英语和数学能力(分别通过汉语选词填空、英语选词填空、算术计算测量)中的贡献。结果发现，控制年龄、性别、智力和反应速度后，形状知觉不仅在汉语和数学能力中发挥独立性作用，而且在英语能力中也发挥独立性作用。结果说明形状知觉是表意文字和表音文字共同的认知基础，完善了形状知觉在语言中的作用范围。

关键词: 形状知觉, 语言, 表意文字, 表音文字, 小学生

Jiaxin CUI, Yuhan ZUO, Jiajia FENG, Zhanling CUI. Ideographic and Phonographic Languages Share a Common Cognitive Foundation: Evidence from Visual Form Perception[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2025, 23(6): 766-773.

崔佳歆, 左钰涵, 冯佳佳, 崔占玲. 表意文字和表音文字具有共同的认知基础：来自形状知觉的证据[J]. 心理与行为研究, 2025, 23(6): 766-773.

Figures/Tables 6

References 0

	崔佳歆, 冯佳佳, 左钰涵, 崔占玲, 周新林. 形状知觉在儿童语言能力中的独立性预测作用. 心理发展与教育, 2024, 40 (6): 782- 791.
	李文玲, 张厚粲. 图画与中, 英文字词识别加工的比较. 心理学报, 1993, (1): 24- 30.
	彭聃龄, 王春茂. 汉字加工的基本单元: 来自笔画数效应和部件数效应的证据. 心理学报, 1997, 29 (1): 8- 16.
	彭瑞祥, 张武田. 速示下再认汉字的某些特征. 心理学报, 1984, (1): 49- 54.
	谭力海, 彭聃龄. 关于语义情境与汉语单字词特征分析之间关系的实验研究. 心理学动态, 1990, (2): 5- 10.
	谭力海, 彭聃龄. 汉字的视觉识别过程: 对形码和音码作用的考察. 心理学报, 1991, (3): 272- 278.
	闫梦格, 李虹, 李宜逊, 周雪莲, 回懿, 程亚华, 伍新春. 识字量和词汇知识在儿童阅读发展中的相对重要性. 心理发展与教育, 2020, 36 (3): 311- 317.
	杨飒, 季雨竹, 刘梦连, 毕鸿燕. 汉语阅读障碍儿童的视觉空间注意能力及其与汉语阅读的关系. 中国心理卫生杂志, 2020, 34 (8): 673- 678.
	喻柏林, 冯玲, 曹河圻, 李文玲. 汉字的视知觉——知觉任务效应和汉字属性效应. 心理学报, 1990, (2): 141- 148.
	张丽华, 王晓彤, 隋雪, 毕一飞. 词汇视觉复杂性和词频对不同难度汉语搜索阅读的影响. 心理科学, 2020, 43 (4): 808- 814.
	张译允, 马媛媛, 赵锦, 周新林, 邵园颖. 视觉形状知觉在近似数量系统和计算流畅性关系中的作用. 心理科学进展, 2022, 30 (6): 1242- 1252.
	Benson, D. F., & Greenberg, J. P. Visual form agnosia: A specific defect in visual discrimination. Archives of Neurology, 1969, 20 (1): 82- 89. DOI
	Biederman, I. Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding. Psychological Review, 1987, 94 (2): 115- 147. DOI
	Bolger, D. J., Perfetti, C. A., & Schneider, W. Cross-cultural effect on the brain revisited: Universal structures plus writing system variation. Human Brain Mapping, 2005, 25 (1): 92- 104. DOI
	Cavina-Pratesi, C., Large, M. E., & Milner, A. D. Visual processing of words in a patient with visual form agnosia: A behavioural and fMRI study. Cortex, 2015, 64, 29- 46. DOI
	Cheng, D. Z., Xiao, Q., Chen, Q., Cui, J. X., & Zhou, X. L. Dyslexia and dyscalculia are characterized by common visual perception deficits. Developmental Neuropsychology, 2018, 43 (6): 497- 507. DOI
	Cui, J. X., Zhang, Y. Y., Cheng, D. Z., Li, D. W., & Zhou, X. L. Visual form perception can be a cognitive correlate of lower level math categories for teenagers. Frontiers in Psychology, 2017, 8, 1336. DOI
	Cui, J. X., Zhang, Y. Y., Wan, S. R., Chen, C. S., Zeng, J. Y., & Zhou, X. L. Visual form perception is fundamental for both reading comprehension and arithmetic computation. Cognition, 2019, 189, 141- 154. DOI
	Fernandes, M. A., Moscovitch, M., Ziegler, M., & Grady, C. Brain regions associated with successful and unsuccessful retrieval of verbal episodic memory as revealed by divided attention. Neuropsychologia, 2005, 43 (8): 1115- 1127. DOI
	Fias, W., Lammertyn, J., Caessens, B., & Orban, G. A. Processing of abstract ordinal knowledge in the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2007, 27 (33): 8952- 8956. DOI
	Gibson, E, J. (1969). Principles of perceptual learning and development. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
	Grotheer, M., Ambrus, G. G., & Kovács, G. Causal evidence of the involvement of the number form area in the visual detection of numbers and letters. NeuroImage, 2016, 132, 314- 319. DOI
	Huang, J. T., & Wang, M. Y. From unit to gestalt: Perceptual dynamics in recognizing Chinese characters. Advances in Psychology, 1992, 90, 3- 35.
	Kalashnikova, M., Burnham, D., & Goswami, U. The role of paired associate learning in acquiring letter-sound correspondences: A longitudinal study of children at family risk for dyslexia. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2021, 25 (6): 504- 518. DOI
	Kalindi, S. C., McBride, C., Tong, X. H., Wong, N. L. Y., Chung, K. H. K., & Lee, C. Y. Beyond phonological and morphological processing: Pure copying as a marker of dyslexia in Chinese but not poor reading of English. Annals of Dyslexia, 2015, 65 (2): 53- 68. DOI
	Kim, J. G., Biederman, I., Lescroart, M. D., & Hayworth, K. J. Adaptation to objects in the lateral occipital complex (LOC): Shape or semantics. Vision Research, 2009, 49 (18): 2297- 2305. DOI
	Kourtzi, Z., & Kanwisher, N. Representation of perceived object shape by the human lateral occipital complex. Science, 2001, 293 (5534): 1506- 1509. DOI
	Liu, N. Y., Zhao, J., Huang, C., Xing, X. P., Lu, S., & Wang, Z. Y. Predicting early reading fluency based on preschool measures of low-level visual temporal processing: A possible mediation by high-level visual temporal processing skills. Infant and Child Development, 2021, 30 (2): e2211.
	Mahalanobis, P. C. On the generalized distance in statistics. Proceedings of the National Institute of Science (Calcutta), 1936, 2 (1): 49- 55.
	Milner, A. D., Perrett, D. I., Johnston, R. S., Benson, P. J., Jordan, T. R., Heeley, D. W., ... Terazzi, E. Perception and action in ‘visual form agnosia’. Brain, 1991, 114 (1): 405- 428. DOI
	Palmer, S. E. (1999). Vision science: Photons to phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
	Pérez-Pereira, M., Martínez-López, Z., & Maneiro, L. Longitudinal relationships between reading abilities, phonological awareness, language abilities and executive functions: Comparison of low risk preterm and full-term children. Frontiers in Psychology, 2020, 11, 468. DOI
	Perfetti, C. A., & Tan, L. H. Write to read: The brain’s universal reading and writing network. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2013, 17 (2): 56- 57. DOI
	Pleisch, G., Karipidis, I. I., Brauchli, C., Röthlisberger, M., Hofstetter, C., Stämpfli, P., ... Brem, S. Emerging neural specialization of the ventral occipitotemporal cortex to characters through phonological association learning in preschool children. NeuroImage, 2019, 189, 813- 831. DOI
	Price, C. J., & Devlin, J. T. The myth of the visual word form area. Neuroimage, 2003, 19 (3): 473- 481. DOI
	Rios-Lopez, P., Molinaro, N., & Lallier, M. Tapping to a beat in synchrony predicts brain print sensitivity in pre-readers. Brain and Language, 2019, 199, 104693. DOI
	Rumelhart, D. E., & McClelland, J. L. An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: Part 2. the contextual enhancement effect and some tests and extensions of the model. Psychological Review, 1982, 89 (1): 60- 94. DOI
	Schneider, W. J., & McGrew, K. S. (2012). The Cattell-Horn-Carroll model of intelligence. In D. P. Flanagan & P. L. Harrison (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues (pp. 99–144). London: The Guilford Press.
	Schyns, P. G., & Oliva, A. From blobs to boundary edges: Evidence for time- and spatial-scale-dependent scene recognition. Psychological Science, 1994, 5 (4): 195- 200. DOI
	Shum, J., Hermes, D., Foster, B. L., Dastjerdi, M., Rangarajan, V., Winawer, J., ... Parvizi, J. A brain area for visual numerals. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2013, 33 (16): 6709- 6715. DOI
	Siok, W. T., Niu, Z. D., Jin, Z., Perfetti, C. A., & Tan, L. H. A structural-functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008, 105 (14): 5561- 5566.
	Siok, W. T., Spinks, J. A., Jin, Z., & Tan, L. H. Developmental dyslexia is characterized by the co-existence of visuospatial and phonological disorders in Chinese children. Current Biology, 2009, 19 (19): R890- R892. DOI
	Soltész, F., & Szűcs, D. Neural adaptation to non-symbolic number and visual shape: An electrophysiological study. Biological Psychology, 2014, 103, 203- 211. DOI
	Steiger, J. H. Tests for comparing elements of a correlation matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 1980, 87 (2): 245- 251. DOI
	Tan, L. H., Spinks, J. A., Eden, G. F., Perfetti, C. A., & Siok, W. T. Reading depends on writing, in Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2005, 102 (24): 8781- 8785.
	Thesen, T., McDonald, C. R., Carlson, C., Doyle, W., Cash, S., Sherfey, J., ... Halgren, E. Sequential then interactive processing of letters and words in the left fusiform gyrus. Nature Communications, 2012, 3 (1): 1284. DOI
	Ting, S. K. S., Chia, P. S., Chan, Y. H., Kwek, K. J. H., Tan, W., Hameed, S., & Tan, E. K. Characteristics of Chinese-English bilingual dyslexia in right occipito-temporal lesion. Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, 2017, 45, 146- 148. DOI
	Tong, X. H., Leung, W. W. S., & Tong, X. L. Visual statistical learning and orthographic awareness in Chinese children with and without developmental dyslexia. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 2019, 92, 103443. DOI
	Treisman, A., & Schmidt, H. Illusory conjunctions in the perception of objects. Cognitive Psychology, 1982, 14 (1): 107- 141. DOI
	Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 1980, 12 (1): 97- 136. DOI
	Xu, M., Wang, T. F., Chen, S. P., Fox, P. T., & Tan, L. H. Effective connectivity of brain regions related to visual word recognition: An fMRI study of Chinese reading. Human Brain Mapping, 2015, 36 (7): 2580- 2591. DOI
	Zhang, Y. Y., Liu, T. J., Chen, C. S., & Zhou, X. L. Visual form perception supports approximate number system acuity and arithmetic fluency. Learning and Individual Differences, 2019, 71, 1- 12. DOI
	Zhou, X. L., Hu, Y. W., Yuan, L., Gu, T. A., & Li, D. W. (2020). Visual form perception predicts 3-year longitudinal development of mathematical achievement. Cognitive Processing, 21(4), 521–532.
	Zhou, X. L., Wei, W., Zhang, Y. Y., Cui, J. X., & Chen, C. S. Visual perception can account for the close relation between numerosity processing and computational fluency. Frontiers in Psychology, 2015, 6, 1364.

	M	SD	分半信度
1.算术计算(总)	41.15	15.37	0.84
2.算术计算(简单)	25.28	5.53	0.87
3.算术计算(中等)	11.64	8.16	0.84
4.算术计算(困难)	4.23	5.35	0.88
5.汉语选词填空(总)	43.91	23.81	0.95
6.汉语选词填空(简单)	19.27	10.67	0.82
7.汉语选词填空(中等)	14.36	9.81	0.93
8.汉语选词填空(困难)	10.28	8.16	0.83
9.英语选词填空(总)	14.82	17.38	0.96
10.英语选词填空(简单)	5.69	7.32	0.91
11.英语选词填空(中等)	6.39	8.49	0.89
12.英语选词填空(困难)	2.73	5.69	0.87
13.箭头形状判断	52.88	32.32	0.97
14.瑞文推理	22.63	7.74	0.87
15.选择反应时(ACC)	95.02	7.03	0.89
16.选择反应时(RT)	428.22	111.85	0.94

	M	SD	分半信度
1.算术计算(总)	41.15	15.37	0.84
2.算术计算(简单)	25.28	5.53	0.87
3.算术计算(中等)	11.64	8.16	0.84
4.算术计算(困难)	4.23	5.35	0.88
5.汉语选词填空(总)	43.91	23.81	0.95
6.汉语选词填空(简单)	19.27	10.67	0.82
7.汉语选词填空(中等)	14.36	9.81	0.93
8.汉语选词填空(困难)	10.28	8.16	0.83
9.英语选词填空(总)	14.82	17.38	0.96
10.英语选词填空(简单)	5.69	7.32	0.91
11.英语选词填空(中等)	6.39	8.49	0.89
12.英语选词填空(困难)	2.73	5.69	0.87
13.箭头形状判断	52.88	32.32	0.97
14.瑞文推理	22.63	7.74	0.87
15.选择反应时(ACC)	95.02	7.03	0.89
16.选择反应时(RT)	428.22	111.85	0.94

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
1.算术计算(总)
2.算术计算(简单)	0.74^**
3.算术计算(中等)	0.88^**	0.48^**
4.算术计算(困难)	0.76^**	0.37^**	0.52^**
5.汉语选词填空(总)	0.55^**	0.35^**	0.47^**	0.48^**
6.汉语选词填空(简单)	0.34^**	0.33^**	0.27^**	0.24^**	0.82^**
7.汉语选词填空(中等)	0.55^**	0.30^**	0.50^**	0.50^**	0.89^**	0.59^**
8.汉语选词填空(困难)	0.48^**	0.25^**	0.43^**	0.48^**	0.77^**	0.38^**	0.63^**
9.英语选词填空(总)	0.59^**	0.30^**	0.56^**	0.52^**	0.46^**	0.20^*	0.47^**	0.52^**
10.英语选词填空(简单)	0.54^**	0.23^**	0.54^**	0.50^**	0.47^**	0.28^**	0.47^**	0.45^**	0.82^**
11.英语选词填空(中等)	0.54^**	0.35^**	0.49^**	0.44^**	0.42^**	0.18^*	0.43^**	0.48^**	0.87^**	0.58^**
12.英语选词填空(困难)	0.28^**	0.10	0.28^**	0.29^**	0.17^*	−0.02	0.19^*	0.31^**	0.69^**	0.37^**	0.43^**
13.箭头形状判断	0.45^**	0.35^**	0.41^**	0.32^**	0.55^**	0.37^**	0.58^**	0.42^**	0.35^**	0.31^**	0.34^**	0.15

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
1.算术计算(总)
2.算术计算(简单)	0.74^**
3.算术计算(中等)	0.88^**	0.48^**
4.算术计算(困难)	0.76^**	0.37^**	0.52^**
5.汉语选词填空(总)	0.55^**	0.35^**	0.47^**	0.48^**
6.汉语选词填空(简单)	0.34^**	0.33^**	0.27^**	0.24^**	0.82^**
7.汉语选词填空(中等)	0.55^**	0.30^**	0.50^**	0.50^**	0.89^**	0.59^**
8.汉语选词填空(困难)	0.48^**	0.25^**	0.43^**	0.48^**	0.77^**	0.38^**	0.63^**
9.英语选词填空(总)	0.59^**	0.30^**	0.56^**	0.52^**	0.46^**	0.20^*	0.47^**	0.52^**
10.英语选词填空(简单)	0.54^**	0.23^**	0.54^**	0.50^**	0.47^**	0.28^**	0.47^**	0.45^**	0.82^**
11.英语选词填空(中等)	0.54^**	0.35^**	0.49^**	0.44^**	0.42^**	0.18^*	0.43^**	0.48^**	0.87^**	0.58^**
12.英语选词填空(困难)	0.28^**	0.10	0.28^**	0.29^**	0.17^*	−0.02	0.19^*	0.31^**	0.69^**	0.37^**	0.43^**
13.箭头形状判断	0.45^**	0.35^**	0.41^**	0.32^**	0.55^**	0.37^**	0.58^**	0.42^**	0.35^**	0.31^**	0.34^**	0.15

预测变量	数学(总)	数学(简单)	数学(中等)	数学(困难)
性别	0.02	0.01	0.01	0.03
年龄	−0.12	−0.03	−0.18^*	−0.04
瑞文推理	0.34^***	0.23^*	0.22^*	0.40^***
选择反应时(ACC)	−0.07	0.01	−0.17	0.04
选择反应时(RT)	−0.02	0.12	−0.03	−0.14
箭头形状判断	0.33^***	0.27^**	0.35^***	0.15
R²	0.35	0.20	0.29	0.26
∆R²	0.08^***	0.05^**	0.09^***	0.02
p	<0.001	0.005	<0.001	0.111