Orthographic and Phonological Activation in the Semantic Processing of Korean Hanja and Hangul

Abstract

The Korean orthography includes alphabetic Hangul and logographic Hanja scripts. Two experiments investigated whether (a) the role of phonological and orthographic activation differs during semantic processing of Hangul and Hanja and (b) proficiency in Hanja would affect the way that phonology is used in the comprehension of Hanja characters. In Experiment 1, in which Hanja was tested, less-skilled Hanja readers produced more false positive categorisation errors on homophone foils, as well as on visually similar foils, than on their corresponding controls. Skilled Hanja readers however, produced reliable visual similarity effects, but not homophonic effects. These results indicate that phonology plays a prominent role in the semantic processing of logographic Hanja for the less-skilled readers, but not for the skilled readers. In Experiment 2, in which Hangul was tested, both skilled and less-skilled Hanja readers displayed strong homophonic effects for pseudohomophones, suggesting that phonology plays a crucial role in the semantic processing of Hangul. Overall, the results indicate that both language proficiency and script difference can affect the pattern of semantic processing of written language.