In this study, we used single kanji that possess optional rendering far investigating the automatic phonological activations in reading. The evidence for early automatic phonological processing in reading Japanese kanji was based on the studies employing two-character compound words or single characters in sentences. In these cases, kanji have unique phonology or rendering, although almost all kanji possess plural phonology or optional rendering. Such differences in phonology are the most critical for reading Japanese kanji. Therefore, the proposal of each phonological process should not be applied to the kanji reading system. We investigated the automatic phonological activations in reading with different SOAs (90, 260, 450, and 900 ms) using a similar paradigm of Perfetti and Zhang (1995). We found phonological activations in the semantic judgment, but not semantic activations in the phonological judgment on all SOA. In conclusion, the phonology is an automatic process even in reading single kanji.

Key words: single kanji, phonological process, phonological rendering