Interspeaker variation in phonological and semantic priming effects on recognition of Korean and English words

Abstract

The present study investigates whether phonological and semantic priming effects emerge for Korean L1 and L2 and English L1 speakers. Since there have been few studies on interspeaker variation in these priming patterns, we focus on the presence of these effects and the variability between facilitatory and inhibitory effects of phonologically similar and semantically related primes. In order to examine these effects, visual lexical decision tasks were performed with Korean and English words for Korean L1 and L2 and English native speakers. First, results showed that unlike previous studies, phonologically similar primes facilitated or interfered with processing of target words across speakers in L2 as well as L1 groups. Second, it was found that semantic priming occurred for half the speakers, but semantically related primes rather suppressed the processing of the targets for the rest of speakers, compared to semantically unrelated primes. This consistent variation among three groups of speakers indicates that facilitatory or inhibitory roles of phonologically and semantically similar words might be contingent on individual speakers’processing strategies. Furthermore, phonological or semantic facilitatory effects might provide support for the claim that every word is connected with each other in the mental lexicon, but such networks might either coactivate the similar words or lead to strong competition in accessing the actual target words.