The question explored in this set of experiments is whether a logograph is perceived as a whole or its constituents represented as independent entities at some early stage of perceptual processing, with the whole percept emerging only later. The task required subjects to judge whether two stimuli were the same or different. In Experiment 1, the logographs were presented in their canonical form; in Experiment 2, a 6-pixel gap was inserted between the left and right radicals. Five different conditions were run. In the two baseline conditions, the stimuli were two left or two right radicals. In the other three conditions, both radicals were presented but the stimulus pair had either the same left or right radical or had different left and right radicals. If separable processing obtains, there ought not to be any difference between the baseline radical-alone condition and the conditions where the stimulus pair contains a superfluous left or right radical. On the other hand, if processing is configural, there ought to be facilitation in the condition where both radicals are different compared to the conditions where one of the radicals is always the same. The pattern of facilitation and interference for Chinese readers and non-readers was markedly different. The former processed the stimuli holistically while the latter treated the radicals as separate units, suggesting that higher-order cognitive factors, specifically, lexical knowledge, affected perceptual processing.

Key words: character perception, configural vs. separable processing