Abstract: The present experiment was conducted to examine whether Chinese charac-ter identification is mediated by phonological processes or not. A maskedpriming paradigm was used. Five kinds of character pairs were used as stimuli(orthographically similar; orthographically similar homonym; homophone;synonym; and cotrol character). All of them were divided into higher andlower frequencies. The exposure duration were 40ms for targets and 25, 35,45ms for priming characters. The results showed that there was a significantinhibit effect for homophone targets compared with control targets at 25msand 35ms exposure duration in the condition of higher frequency, And theorthographically similar homonym targets got significant facilitation effect at25ms. In lower frequency condition a significant facilitation was obtained forboth orthographically similar and orthographically similar homonym targetsat three exposure dtirations of priming. And the homophone showed insigni-ficant difference compared to the control targets. The results suggest thatChinese character identification is mediated by phonological processes. Theconditions in which the function of phonology appeared were discussed.

Key words: phonology, Chinese character, recognition, priming