[Analyses of responsible factors for the delay effect produced by prolonged viewing in recognizing Kanji characters]

Ninose & Gyoba (1996) examined delays in the recognition of Kanjis following prolonged viewing. They suggested that a Kanji pattern may be internally represented as a whole and the prolonged viewing may produce an adaptation effect specific to such a representation. The present study examined responsible factors producing the delay effect more in detail by manipulating figural components of adaptation and test Kanjis. The delay occurred only when the test Kanji was the same pattern as the adaptation Kanji in all local details. In contrast, the delay were not observed either when the global pattern of the test Kanji was similar to that of the adaptation Kanji, or when a part of the test Kanji was the same pattern as the whole configuration of the adaptation Kanji. These results indicate that the delay effect is produced by prolonged viewing of the adaptation Kanji with exactly the same local and global configurations as the test Kanji, while the previous studies have revealed that the delay effect occurs independent from Kanji's size and orientation in some ranges.