• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-26
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the phonological information or the orthographic information plays a major role in visual word recognition. To do so, we used a non-word lexical decision task(LDT) in Experiment 1 and masked priming tasks in Experiement 2 and 3. The results of Experiment 1 showed that reaction times and the error rates were affected by the orthographic characteristics of the non-word stimuli such that orthographically similar non-words condition showed prolonged reaction times and higher error rates than control condition. In Experiment 2 and Experiment 3, the participants performed masked priming lexical decision tasks in two SOA conditions(60ms, 150ms). The results of the both experiments showed that the orthographically identical first syllable priming facilitated lexical decision of the target words while both of the pseudo-homophone priming and the phonologically identical first syllable priming did not. The dual route hypothesis(Coltheart et al, 2001), assuming that orthographic information rather than phonological information is the major source for the visual word recognition processes, fits well with the results of the current study.