Abstract: Two experiments were conducted to investigate the semantic retrieval for Chinese language. In experiment 1, twenty-three two-character words selected from thirteen sentences were used as stimuli in a free association test. The results indicated that semantic distance in terms of commonsense relations between words is useful to predict the performance of the free association test. In experiment 2, the true/false judgement reaction time technique was used. Thirty-eight (20 true and 18 false) sentences were used as stimuli in a true/false judgement test. The findings coincided with the results obtained by Collins and Quillian. The difference of retrieval time between levels in which the sentences were stored was verified. The results indicated that in the stage of information retrieval, the morphological effect of Chinese characters is not an important factor.

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