Abstract: The study on eye movement indicated that recognition time for Chinesecharacters is mediated by the number of strokes. The unitization model statedthat identification of familiar words was unrelated to the processing of com-ponent letter of a word. Using different characters which involved differentnumber of strokes and parts in contrast with simple characters and few strokecharacters, the present research studied the problem of processing unit forChinese characters of high and low frequency in three experiments. The resultsindicated that the number of strokes or the number of parts in characters havea significant effect on the recognition time for high frequency characters. Butthe significant effect of low frequency characters on the naming time only ap-peared under the condition when the number of strokes and the number ofparts both have some distinction. The result does not support the Models men-tioned above. A synthetical model of multiple component involving strokes andparts would be reasonable in explaining the results.

Key words: Chinese character, recognition, unit, naming