Perception and production of a feature correlation in Chinese characters

Abstract How detailed is the implicit knowledge of regularities in written form? To address this question experimentally in Chinese, we examined a subtle feature correlation in which left stroke curving is obligatory in narrow arched-shaped components but not in wide ones, despite neither feature being lexically contrastive. While width did not directly affect curving classifications in a perception experiment, a statistically significant subset of participants gave significantly more “curved” responses and/or significantly increased them for narrow arches. In a handwriting experiment, the contrast in written curving degree was significantly greater for wide arches, and stroke speeds were also significantly more similar, as if they were planned separately. Together these results confirm that even very subtle formal patterns may become mentally active through experience with a writing system, and also suggest that stroke planning in handwriting shares similarities with the effects of prosody on articulation in speech and signing.