Planning units in Chinese handwriting: Comparing the role of radicals and logographemes

The present study investigated the word-form encoding process of handwriting in a nonalphabetic writing system, Chinese. The form-preparation paradigm (Experiment 1) and the picture-word interference paradigm (Experiment 2) were adopted to examine the facilitation effects of radical or logographeme overlap in Chinese handwritten production. Three different groups of Chinese writers were involved: Mainland Chinese participants who mainly used phonology-based Chinese input methods (Pinyin) for typewriting and the simplified Chinese script, Hong Kong participants who mainly used orthography-based input methods (e.g., Sucheng, Cangjie) and the traditional script, and Taiwanese participants who mainly used phonology-based input methods (Zhuyin) and the traditional script. The radical effects were consistently observed in the two paradigms across groups, indicating a prominent role of radicals in planning Chinese handwritten production. The Hong Kong participants showed a significantly larger radical effect than the Taiwanese participants, suggesting an influence of typewriting experience on the salience of radicals during Chinese handwriting. On the other hand, the logographeme effects were significant in the Mainland participants only and significantly smaller than the radical effects in the form-preparation paradigm and at 0-ms stimulus onset asynchrony in the picture-word interference paradigm. No significant difference was found between the radical and logographeme effects at −100- and 100-ms stimulus onset asynchrony, suggesting that the time courses of radical processing and logographeme processing are similar despite the lower salience of logographemes in planning Chinese handwritten production. Overall, these findings suggest that radicals and (nonradical) logographemes are processed at the same level of word-form encoding during Chinese handwritten production, but with different saliences. Copyright © 2025 American Psychological Association.