LAUSR

AbstractGiven the well-documented consonant primacy established in Roman script, this study examined the role of consonants and vowels in lexical decision of Korean Hangul among skilled Korean readers in order to identify whether the salient role of consonants over vowels would be script-universal or script-specific. Three experiments were carried out to investigate how consonant primes facilitated word recognition using related and unrelated consonant primes (e.g., ㅇㄴㅅㅁ –인삼 vs. ㅈㅎㅂㄱ– 인삼, respectively; Experiment 1), consonant and vowel primes in linearity (e.g.,ㅅㄴㅂㄹ – 손발 vs. ㅜㅗ – 운동, respectively; Experiment 2), and consonant and vowel primes in syllabic blocks (e.g., – 침술, – 불법, respectively; Experiment 3). Results showed that significant consonant priming effects were not found, in comparison to those of vowels, in either linear or block formats. Taken together, the findings suggest that the consonant primacy effect may not apply to non-Roman script Hangul recognition and may be script-specific.