40 U.S. adults with no knowledge of Chinese were given an English word or short phrase together with two Chinese characters and were asked which character matched the meaning of the English word.
40 U.S. adults with no knowledge of Chinese were given an English word or short phrase together with two Chinese characters and were asked which character matched the meaning of the English word. 213 simple-structure Chinese characters that occur in textbooks for elementary school children were used in the study. The frequency norms were given in Li and Liu 1988. To judge picturability, 31 English speaking students were shown the English translations used in the experiment and had to rate each translation on a 7-point scale to indicate the extent to which the concept could be expressed easily in a simple black-on-white line drawing or diagram.