Abstract

Four experiments examined the effects of word fragment type on perceptual and conceptual processing in Korean word completion test. Target words were two-letter words without a final consonant. Word fragment types were manipulated in seven ways by deleting a vowel from second letter, a consonant from second letter, a vowel from first letter, a consonant from first letter, vowels from both letters, consonants from both letters, or a second letter (e.g., '가ㅁ', '가ㅜ', 'ㄱ시', 'ㅗ부', 'ㄴㅂ', 'ㅔㅐ', '계'). When study-test modality shifts were manipulated, significant modality effect was obtained in some word fragment types but not obtained in other types (Experiment 1). When semantic and perceptual study conditions were manipulated between Ss (Experiment 2A) or within Ss in a blocked list (Experiment 2B), significant levels of processing (LoP) effects were obtained but interaction between LoP and word fragment type was not significant. But when semantic and perceptual conditions were manipulated within Ss in a mixed list (Experiment 2C), significant interaction between LoP and word fragment type were obtained. These findings suggest that the relative contribution of perceptual and conceptual processing in word completion priming is dependent on word fragment type, and that perceptual and conceptual word completion tests can be distinguished by word fragment types.