Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to determine the role of phonology in identifying words written in Hangul. Using a phrase verification task, Experiment 1 secured error rates and RTs to both phrases with pseudohomophones and phrases with spelling controls. Much higher error rate was found in the spelling controls than in the pseudohomophone phrases, even if no difference was found in the response latencies. Experiment 2 used the naming and lexical decision tasks to determine whether a pseudohomophone primes a target semantically associated with the word which is pronounced the same as the prime. Whereas no significant priming effect was found in naming task, the priming effect found in lexical decision task was significant. However, the significant priming effect was smaller that the associative priming effect. Using lexical decision task, Experiment 3 attempted to replicate the significant pseudohomophone effect found in Experiment 2, and to determine the extent to which a target is primed by a homophone with a semantic associate of the target. Neither a homophone nor a pseudohomophone primed their targets significantly. Taken together, these results lead to the conclusion that phonology plays only secondary role in Hangul word identification.