It hasn’t been clear how holistic and analytic processing contribute to character recognition yet. The current study focused on two issues: (1) whether configural processing is sufficient to support the performance of identifying characters in absence of analytic processing; (2) whether configural processing involves multiple levels of character recognition. We examined the inversion effect in different levels of character processing from foveal to peripheral vision. Participants were asked to identify the stimulus from nine alternatives after a stimulus (character, radical, and stroke) is presented either in upright or inverted orientation. The results showed that the identification of characters and radicals had robust peripheral inversion effects at the locations of 6.2° and 12.2°, but the identification accuracies of inverted stimulus (parts only) remained above chance. These findings suggested that the configural processing of characters could not be isolated from analytical processing in the periphery in the current study. Furthermore, the greater inversion effect shown for characters than radicals at 6.2° might indicate that holistic processing of characters involves two levels of configurations: character structure and radical processing. The peripheral inversion effect for stroke was also observed and the role of stroke-based analytic in character recognition was discussed.

目前尚不清楚整体和分析处理如何促进字符识别。目前的研究集中在两个问题上：（1）在没有分析处理的情况下，配置处理是否足以支持识别字符的性能；(2) 配置处理是否涉及多层次的字符识别。我们检查了从中央凹到周边视觉的不同字符处理级别的反转效应。在以直立或倒置方向呈现刺激（字符、部首和中风）后，参与者被要求从九种选择中识别刺激。结果表明，汉字和部首的识别在6.2°和12.2°位置具有较强的外围反转效应，但反向刺激（仅部分）的识别精度仍然高于偶然。这些发现表明，在当前的研究中，字符的构型加工不能与外围的分析加工分离。此外，在 6.2° 处显示的字符比部首更大的反转效应可能表明字符的整体处理涉及两个层次的配置：字符结构和部首处理。还观察了笔画的外围反转效应，并讨论了基于笔画的分析在字符识别中的作用。在 6.2° 处显示的字符比部首更大的反转效应可能表明字符的整体处理涉及两个层次的配置：字符结构和部首处理。还观察了笔画的外围反转效应，并讨论了基于笔画的分析在字符识别中的作用。在 6.2° 处显示的字符比部首更大的反转效应可能表明字符的整体处理涉及两个层次的配置：字符结构和部首处理。还观察了笔画的外围反转效应，并讨论了基于笔画的分析在字符识别中的作用。