The locus of the masked onset priming effect

Abstract

This study investigates the masked onset priming effect (MOPE) in Korean. The results revealed facilitated naming for nonwords written in the alphabetic syllabary hangul when primes and targets shared an initial consonant-vowel (CV) syllable as well as when they shared only an initial onset (C) phoneme. However, there was greater priming at the syllable level than at the phoneme level. Taken together with previous research on Korean (Kim & Davis, 2002), these findings indicate that the MOPE reflects facilitated grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes when the pronunciation of the target is computed through the nonlexical route, and are interpreted to support the Forster and Davis (1991) model of this effect.

The proximate unit in Korean speech production: Phoneme or syllable?

“…In sum, J. I. Han and Verdonschot (2019) replicated the pattern of results reported by Witzel et al (2013) with both the masked-priming read-aloud task (used by Witzel et al) and the phonological Stroop task.…”

“…In contrast, Witzel et al (2013) did find significant phoneme onset priming effects. They also employed a masked-priming read-aloud task but used bi-syllabic Korean non-words as targets instead.…”

“…As for Witzel et al’s (2013) findings, these results could be interpreted in terms of the benefit due to segmental overlap, and in line with this, J. I. Han and Verdonschot (2019) concluded that “the onset segment and not the syllable is the initial (or proximate) phonological unit used in the segment-to-frame encoding process during speech planning in Korean” (p. 901).…”

“…These non-words were all preceded by one of three disyllabic Hangul primes (also non-words), specifically: onset phoneme overlap (e.g., <페추> - <피토> /p h ε.c h u/, /p h i.t h o/), CV overlap (e.g., <피추> - <피토> /p h ɪ.c h u/, /p h ɪ.t h o/), versus an unrelated prime (e.g., <카추> - <피토> /k h a.c h u/, /p h ɪ. t h o/). The results by Witzel et al (2013) showed significantly faster reaction times (RTs) when primes and target shared the onset phoneme (9 ms) and the CV syllable (16 ms), and priming was significantly larger for CV primes compared with phoneme primes. Note that the first syllable of all of their primes and targets were open syllables (i.e., CV syllables), and hence it is unclear whether the greater benefit observed with the CV overlap was due to the greater amount of segmental overlap or due to the overlap in the syllable.…”

“…Of the masked-priming read-aloud paradigm, O’Séaghdha (2015) has commented that “masked primes could influence many word-production processes” (p. 13), not just phonological encoding. Indeed, a major alternative account of masked onset priming effect attributes the facilitation in reading aloud due to the onset overlap between the prime and the target to the sub-lexical grapheme–phoneme mapping process (e.g., Forster & Davis, 1991), and both Kim and Davis (2002) and Witzel et al (2013) interpreted their finding of masked onset priming effect with Korean words written in Hangul in terms of this process, rather than using phonological encoding. Given these issues, we heed O’Séaghdha’s (2015) call for “more data using tasks that more fully engage speech production processes,” and consequently, we use the PWI task here.…”