title: Alternating-script priming in Japanese: Are Katakana and Hiragana characters interchangeable?
abstract: Models of written word recognition in languages using the Roman alphabet assume that a word's visual form is quickly mapped onto abstract units. This proposal is consistent with the finding that masked priming effects are of similar magnitude from lowercase, uppercase, and alternating-case primes (e.g., beard-BEARD, BEARD-BEARD, and BeArD-BEARD). We examined whether this claim can be readily generalized to the 2 syllabaries of Japanese Kana (Hiragana and Katakana). The specific rationale was that if the visual form of Kana words is lost early in the lexical access process, alternating-script repetition primes should be as effective as same-script repetition primes at activating a target word. Results showed that alternating-script repetition primes were less effective at activating lexical representations of Katakana words than same-script repetition primes-indeed, they were no more effective than partial primes that contained only the Katakana characters from the alternating-script primes. Thus, the idiosyncrasies of each writing system do appear to shape the pathways to lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Metodología, Facultad de Psicología, Universitat de València.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Perea
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Waseda University.
authors.forename: Mariko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nakayama
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario.
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Lupker
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011932:Reading; D013334:Students; D014495:Universities; D014825:Vocabulary; D014956:Writing