Age-of-acquisition effects on oral reading in Chinese

The age of acquisition (AoA) of a word has an effect on oral reading. The mapping hypothesis (Zevin & Seidenberg, 2002, 2004) assumes that AoA effects on oral reading are a consequence of arbitrary mappings between input and output in the lexical network. The Chinese writing system is characterized by mappings between orthography and phonology that are mostly arbitrary, although some regular and consistent characters are predictable. Here, we report reduced effects of written AoA on the reading of predictable characters. We argue that written AoA has an effect on oral reading in Chinese because the family resemblance between lexical items is limited, as compared with written words in alphabetic scripts.