The impact of regularity and consistency on the satiation effect of Chinese characters

When a Chinese character is inspected over a period, it gradually becomes unfamiliar, a phenomenon referred to as the satiation effect. Previous studies have debated whether the phonological information of Chinese characters has an impact on the satiation effect. This study examined the impact of sub-lexical and lexical phonological information, namely regularity and consistency, on the satiation of Chinese characters. Experiment 1 investigated the satiation effect across three types of characters: regular characters, irregular characters, and characters with bound phonetic radicals. Results showed that all three types of characters exhibited a significant satiation effect, but there was no difference in their satiation rate, suggesting limited influence of regularity on Chinese character satiation. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed a significant effect of consistency on satiation. Results showed that the satiation effect was only present for high-consistency characters and not for low-consistency ones. These results provide new insight into how the phonological information conveyed by the phonetic radicals impacts the satiation effect of Chinese characters.