Phonological Recoding in Multi-syllabic Words : Using the Delaying Letter Priming Task

An experiment was conducted in order to investigate the role of phonological information in multisyllabic word processing. Korean multisyllabic words were used as the main stimuli because Korean words have an unique characteristic as compared to English: The phonoloigcal form of the first syllable itself in many words is different from the same syllable within the corresponding word. Thus, delaying such first letter before presenting a target word would provide a clue on phonological recoding (e.g., 국 in 국난 ). Presenting phonologically consistent first syllable as the prime was more advantageous in processing the target than presenting phonologically inconsistent first syllable. These results support the phonologial recoding in multisyallabic word recognition.