Abstract: Typewriting becomes increasingly common as computers have been widely used in our daily life in the 21 century. For alphabetic languages, such as English, typewriting is similar to traditional handwriting except for small differences in hand movement. However, for Chinese—an ideographic language, typewriting is very dif-ferent from traditional handwriting, and it is a new writing experience for those who use it. Whether and how typewriting experience can influence processing of Chinese characters is an important issue to be investigated. Although there have been many studies which have investigated the influence of language experience on lan-guage processing, there are relatively few studies which have investigated the influence of typewriting experi-ence on language processing. The present study aims to investigate the influence of typewriting experience on Chinese character processing.
Two groups of subjects were recruited: one group had rich experience of Pinyin typewriting while the other group has no or limited experience of Pinyin typewriting. Those two groups were asked to participate in two experiments designed to investigate the influence of typewriting on orthographic and phonological processing of Chinese characters separately. In experiment 1, a 2 group (rich experience group, poor experience group) × 2 task (consonant searching, vowel searching) factorial design was adopted. Participants were asked to determine whether the pronunciation of presented characters included /b/ in the consonant searching task or /an/ in the vowel searching task. Stimuli were 144 low frequency Chinese characters and half of them were used as fillers. In experiment 2, a similar 2 group (rich experience group, poor experience group) × 2 task (pronounceable radical searching, unpronounceable radical searching) factorial design was adopted. Participants were asked to determine whether the orthography of presented characters included “巾” (a pronounceable radical) in the pro-nounceable radical searching task or “厶”(an unpronounceable radical) in the unpronounceable radical searching task. Stimuli were another 144 low frequency Chinese characters, and half of them were used as filler. The reac-tion times and error rates were recorded and analyzed.
The results of experiment 1 showed that the reaction time for the rich experience group was significantly shorter than the poor experience group in both the consonant and vowel searching tasks, which suggested that Pinyin typewriting can benefit the phonological processing of Chinese characters. The results are not surprising since Pinyin typewriting primarily uses the phonological cue of Chinese characters. The results of experiment 2 showed that the reaction time for the rich experience group was significantly shorter than the poor experience group in both the pronounceable and unpronounceable radical searching tasks, which suggested that Pinyin typewriting can also benefit the orthographic processing of Chinese characters. This facilitation effect of Pinyin typewriting on orthographical processing may be due to large number of homophones in Chinese characters. When people use Pinyin typewriting, a software program will present all homophones for a typed syllable, re-quiring selection of the correct orthography by choosing the right character from those homophones given. Fur-thermore, we also found that the effect of Pinyin typewriting on the pronounceable radicals was larger than on the unpronounceable radicals. This result may be due to that the pronounceable radicals can provide phonologi-cal cues while unpronounceable radicals do not provide the same cueing effect.
As a whole, the results of the current two experiments indicated that Pinyin typewriting can facilitate both the orthographic and phonological processing of Chinese characters. In addition, it can equally facilitate both consonant and vowel processing, with the facilitation effect being larger for pronounceable radicals than for unpronounceable radicals.

Key words: Pinyin typewriting experience, phonological processing, orthographic processing, Chinese characters