Pre-activation of Orthography and Phonology During Chinese Reading: Evidence from EEG Representational Similarity Analysis

Our brain predicts upcoming information while we comprehend language. Previous studies demonstrate that predictions are generated at various representational levels, from semantic to word-form levels. However, most studies on word-form prediction do not differentiate between the prediction of phonological information (phonological prediction) and the prediction of orthographic forms (orthographic prediction). This leads to an incomplete understanding of the representational nature of word-form prediction. In the present study, we aim to investigate orthographic and phonological predictions in the reading of Chinese, wherein phonology and orthography can be dissociated. Participants read high-constraining sentence pairs predicting either phonologically or orthographically related words, while their EEGs were recorded. Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) were used to quantify the similarity of neural activity patterns between word pairs. Before the predicted words appeared, pairs predicting orthographically related words (with different phonological forms) and phonologically related words (with different orthographic forms) showed more similar neural patterns compared to unrelated pairs. After the target words appeared, both types of related pairs continue to elicit more similar neural patterns. This provides clear neural evidence for item-specific pre-activation of both orthographic and phonological representations during Chinese reading. After word reading, orthographic and phonological activation of these representations persists. Moreover, the orthographic pre-activation effect preceded the phonological effect, supporting that predictive processing consistent with a cascade from orthographic to phonological representations over time.