Bae Sungbong, Lee Chang H, Pae Hye K
Department of Psychology, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, South Korea.
Department of Psychology, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Jul;78(7):1369-1378. doi: 10.1177/17470218241278600. Epub 2024 Sep 19.
While the impact of visual letter similarity on word recognition in the Latin script has been extensively documented using masked priming techniques, research into non-Latin scripts such as Hangul remains limited. Hangul letters are systematically formed by adding one or two strokes to the base form, creating a pool of visually similar letters in the inventory. This study investigated the role of added distinctive strokes in word recognition by employing two experimental tasks: a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and a same-different word matching task (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 1 revealed a visual similarity effect only for primes without distinctive strokes, indicating an asymmetry in the priming effects. Conversely, Experiment 2 showed that visually similar primes facilitated target word processing regardless of the presence of the distinctive stroke, indicating no asymmetric priming effect. These findings suggest initial uncertainty of letter identity during Korean word processing and the processing of distinctive strokes in differentiating visually similar words.
虽然使用掩蔽启动技术已经广泛记录了视觉字母相似性对拉丁字母文字中单词识别的影响，但对韩文等非拉丁字母文字的研究仍然有限。韩文字母是通过在基本形式上添加一或两笔系统地形成的，在字母表中产生了一组视觉上相似的字母。本研究通过采用两项实验任务来调查添加的独特笔画在单词识别中的作用：一项词汇判断任务（实验1）和一项同异单词匹配任务（实验2）。实验1的结果表明，只有没有独特笔画的启动刺激才会产生视觉相似性效应，这表明启动效应存在不对称性。相反，实验2表明，无论是否存在独特笔画，视觉上相似的启动刺激都促进了目标单词的处理，这表明不存在不对称启动效应。这些发现表明，在韩语单词处理过程中字母身份最初存在不确定性，以及在区分视觉上相似的单词时独特笔画的处理情况。
