Abstract

This paper was purported to examine the effect of phonological codability of Korean letter on letter's visual grouping in 1st grader of beginning readers, and 5th grader, skillful readers. To see the visual grouping, letter superiority effect was measured in speeded card sorting task and oddity task. In experiment 1, we manipulated two variables, consonant location and consonant type, and compared the card sorting time in three conditions, initial consonant condition, final consonant condition, and consonant alone condition. The result was that 1st graders show the superiority effect in initial consonant condition but show inferiority effect in the final consonant condition. On the contrary, 5th grade did not show any difference among conditions. Another result was that inferiority effect was greater for 악 / 안 condition which are phonologically different each other than 앋/앚 and 앟/앜 condition which are phonologically indifferent each other. In experiment 2, using oddity test, we manipulated phonological codability by the combination of consonant type ( ㄱ / ㄴ, ㄷ / ㅈ ) and vowel type ( ㅏ , ㅑ ). The result was that in 1st grade the superiority effect was seen only in ㅏ addition condition where letters are phonologically more codable than in ㅑ addition condition but not in 5th graders. The results of experiment 1 and 2 converged that 1st grader's visual grouping is influenced by the phonological codability but not in 5th graders. In experiment 3, we obtained the same results as experiment 2 in spite of paying no attention to a specific target consonant as in experiment 2. These results are discussed with the importance of phonological coding on the perception of Korean letters in beginning reader and phonological processing in early stage of reading skill acquisition.