Effect of memory set-size upon event related potentials for concrete and abstract kanji stimuli

Event related potentials (ERP) and reaction times (RT) were recorded during the performance of memory-retrieval tasks using the Japanese kanji characters. P300 latency and RT increased as the memory set-size increased. The slope differences between RT and P300 latency were larger for stimuli when concrete kanji were used than when abstract kanji were used. This suggests that, in memory search, the 20 subjects were likely to employ direct lexical access when processing concrete kanji and likely to use phonetic coding when processing abstract kanji.