Abstract: Three experiments with different paradigms were conducted to investigate the frequency effect of character components combination in the recognition of Chinese characters. The result of experiment 1 indicated that the combination frequency had significant facilitating effects upon the RT when the task was to name the whole character with 2 components. While in experiment 2,presenting the 2 components separately,the combination frequency also show signifi- cant facilitating effect. When naming the right-left type character combining with 3 character components in experiment 3,the combination frequency had facilitating effect when they were on the left position of the whole character (as in 田 type characters),or inhibitory effect when they were on the right position (as in 田 type characters).

Key words: Chinese character recognition, components combination, integrative recognition, frequency effect