Development of semantic and phonological priming in a shallow orthography

These studies examined whether the unusual accessibility of phonological information From written Korean affects the word recognition processes of children learning to read it. In Experiment 1, 2nd- and 6th-grade Korean children named target words that were preceded by related or unrelated prime words. Priming was found for 6th but not 2nd graders-the opposite of the pattern seen in children leading English. Experiment 2 examined phonological priming in 3rd and 6th graders. Related primes were pseudohomophones of the targets. Younger children tended to show greater priming than did older ones. The results suggest strong reliance on phonological information by children learning to read a script from which such information is easily accessed.