Participants

Twenty-four logographic Chinese readers with Jyutping competency (henceforth, the Jyutping group) and twenty-two participants without Jyutping competency (henceforth, the non-Jyutping group) participated in the study. The two groups of participants were determined based on their Jyutping proficiency, which was evaluated by a timed Jyutping transcription test. The Jyutping test included 20 disyllabic Chinese words presented to the participants as 40 Chinese characters, which covered as many onsets and rhymes in Cantonese as possible. Participants were required to transcribe the 40 Chinese characters into Jyutping labels within 2 minutes (e.g., from “變化” to bin³ faa³). In line with the aim of the study, participants’ scores for transcribing onset consonants were calculated (40 points in total). The Jyutping group obtained much higher average scores for onset phoneme transcription than the non-Jyutping group (mean ± SD: 29.7 ± 8.3 vs. 7.5 ± 3.7). In both groups, the majority of the participants had completed or had been pursuing a college degree at the time of participation and none of them majored in linguistics or psychology. The two groups were matched for age, English proficiency (standardized English scores), and musical experience. Their English proficiency was evaluated based on their most recent scores obtained in standardized English tests used in Hong Kong (IELTS, HKDSE-ENG, or HKALE-ENG). Most of the participants were right-handed and all of them had no reported hearing, speech, or language disorders. The detailed demographic information of the two groups is presented in Table 1.

Participant information.

Informed written consent was obtained from the participants in compliance with the experiment protocols approved by the Human Subjects Ethics Sub-committee of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.