Using Korean to investigate phonological priming effects without the influence of orthography

Two experiments investigated whether the phonological properties of visually presented words influence the process of word identification. Experiments 1(a) and 2 examined masked phonological priming effects when naming was the response measure. Two types of effect were demonstrated, a so-called "onset effect'' and homophone priming effect. Experiment 1(a) found an onset effect for primes and targets written in alphabetic Hangul. This effect was larger the more initial letters were shared but there was no effect when the prime and target shared only final letters. These results suggest that the effect was generated in a serial fashion. A companion lexical decision version Experiment 1(b) showed no onset effects. Experiment 2 capitalised on a feature of the Korean writing system whereby homophonic primes and targets can have no orthographic overlap. In this experiment, homophone priming was found in the absence of any onset effects. It was concluded that the phonology of a printed word is processed rapidly and likely plays a role in word identification.