• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.91-107
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• 2014

The syllable frequency effect is defined as the inhibitory effect that words starting with high frequency syllable generate a longer lexical decision latency and a larger error rate than words starting with low frequency syllable do. Researchers agree that the reason of the inhibitory effect is the interference from syllable neighbors sharing a target's first syllable at the lexical level and the degree of the interference effect correlates with the number of syllable neighbors or stronger syllable neighbors which have a higher word frequency. However, although the syllable frequency can be classified as the syllable type and token frequency, previous studies in visual word recognition have used the syllable frequency without the classification. Recently Conrad, Carreiras, & Jacobs (2008) demonstrated that the syllable type frequency might reflect a sub-lexical processing level including matching from letters to syllables and the syllable token frequency might reflect competitions between a target and higher frequency words of syllable neighbors in the whole word lexical processing level. Therefore, the present study investigated their proposals using word naming tasks. Generally word naming tasks are more sensitive to sub-lexical processing. Thus, the present study expected a facilitative effect of high syllable type frequency and a null effect of high syllable token frequency. In Experiment 1, words starting with high syllable type frequency generated a faster naming latency than words starting with low syllable type frequency with holding syllable token frequency of them. In Experiment 2, high syllable token frequency also created a shorter naming time than low syllable token frequency with holding their syllable type frequency. For that reason, we rejected the propose of Conrad et al. and suggested that both type and token syllable frequency could relate to the sub-lexical processing.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.5 no.10
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• pp.1879-1890
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• 2011

Previous studies of syllable frequency effects have proposed that inhibitory effects due to high first syllable frequency were the products of competitions between activated lexical candidates within a lexical level. However, these studies have primarily used lexical decision tasks to examine the nature of syllable frequency effects. This study investigates whether a syllable frequency effect can arise in semantic categorization tasks and whether phonologically or orthographically defined syllables interact with semantically related variables such as morphological family size. If the syllable frequency effect was created by activations and competitions on a lexical level, it is highly possible that the effect was related to semantic categorization tasks. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, morphological family size and phonological syllable frequency were factorially manipulated. In Experiment 2, morphological family size and orthographic syllable frequency were factorially manipulated. The results demonstrate that morphemes have no relationship with phonological syllables but do with orthographic syllables. This suggests that phonological syllables and orthographic syllables have different roles in the syllable frequency effect on visual word recognition process.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.3-20
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a segmentation unit for a Korean noun is a 'syllable' and whether the process of segmenting spoken words occurs at the lexical level. A syllable monitoring task was administered which required participants to detect an auditorily presented target from visually presented words. In Experiment 1, syllable neighborhood density of high frequency words which can be segmented into both CV-CVC and CVC-VC were controlled. The syllable effect and the neighborhood density effect were significant, and the syllable effect emerged differently depending on the syllable neighborhood density. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 2 where low frequency words were used. The significance of word frequency effect on syllable effect was also examined. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that the segmentation unit for a Korean noun is indeed a 'syllable', and this process can occur at the lexical level.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.277-297
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• 2023

This study attempted to find out how lexical decision of two-syllable words or pseudo-words is affected by syllabic information, such as syllable frequency, syllable (i.e. vowel) type, and presence of final consonant (i.e. batchim), through the analysis of the Korean Lexicon Project Database (KLP-DB). Hierarchical regression of RT data showed that lexical decision of words was influenced by the frequency of the first syllable, the syllable type of the first and second syllables, batchim for the first and second syllables, and also by the interaction of the two syllable types and the interaction of syllable frequency and batchim of the second syllable. For pseudo-words lexical decision was influenced by the frequency of the first and second syllables, syllable type of the first syllable, and batchim for the first and second syllables, and also by the interaction of the two syllable frequencies, the interaction of the two syllable types, and the interaction of syllable frequency and batchim of the first syllable. Word frequency had a strong effect on lexical decision of words, while syllabic information had a stable effect on the lexical decision of pseudo-words. These results indicate that syllabic information should be seriously considered in constructing word and pseudo-word lists and interpreting lexical decision time. Understanding the effect of syllabic information will also contribute to the understanding of word recognition process.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.99-115
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• 2021

Unlike most other alphabetic languages, letter transposition effect was not found in Korean except in the syllable level and in the morpheme level. This study was conducted in order to investigate the possible reason of the absence of letter transposition effect in Korean. Based on previous letter transposition studies, this study was to investigate on whether syllable frequency is a moderating variable and is responsible for the absence of the letter transposition effect. The results showed that significant letter transposition effect was found when a transposed non-word has high frequency syllable(e.g., 민주화 → 진무화), while such effect was not seen in a transposed non-word with low frequency syllable. The results showed that the letter transposition effect can found in Korean as well. The results also implicate the possibility that syllable frequency is the main moderating variable regarding the Korean letter transposition effect.

• MALSORI
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• no.60
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• pp.29-45
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• 2006

We investigated whether the first syllable plays an important role in lexical access in Korean visual word recognition. To do so, one lexical decision task (LDT) and two form primed LDT experiments examined the nature of the syllabic neighborhood effect. In Experiment 1, the syllabic neighborhood density and the syllabic neighborhood frequency was manipulated. The results showed that lexical decision latencies were only influenced by the syllabic neighborhood frequency. The purpose of experiment 2 was to confirm the results of experiment 1 with form-primed LDT task. The lexical decision latency was slower in form-related condition compared to form-unrelated condition. The effect of syllabic neighborhood density was significant only in form-related condition. This means that the first syllable plays an important role in the sub-lexical process. In Experiment 3, we conducted another form-primed LDT task manipulating the number of syllabic neighbors in words with higher frequency neighborhood. The interaction of syllabic neighborhood density and form relation was significant. This result confirmed that the words with higher frequency neighborhood are more inhibited by neighbors sharing the first syllable than words with no higher frequency neighborhood in the lexical level. These findings suggest that the first syllable is the unit of neighborhood and the unit of representation in sub-lexical representation is syllable in Korea.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.117-120
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• 2006

This paper examined two hypotheses. Firstly, if the first syllable of word play an important role in visual word recognition, it may be the unit of word neighbor. Secondly, if the first syllable is the unit of lexical access, the neighborhood size effect and the neighborhood frequency effect would appear in a lexical decision task and a form primed lexical decision task. We conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that words had large neighbors made a inhibitory effect in the LDT(lexical decision task). Experiment 2 showed the interaction between the neighborhood frequency effectand the word form similarity in the form primed LDT. We concluded that the first syllable in Korean words might be the unit of word neighborhood and play a central role in a lexical access.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.137-140
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• 2002

This study was conducted to examine the korean word length effects on auditory word recognition. Linguistically, word length can be defined by several sublexical units such as letters, phonemes, syllables, and so on. In order to investigate which units are used in auditory word recognition, lexical decision task was used. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that syllable length affected response time, and syllable length interacted with word frequency. As a result, in recognizing auditory word syllable length was important variable.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.85-94
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to see the effects of pitch and length patterns on spoken word recognition. In Experiment 1, a syllable monitoring task was used to see the effects of pitch and length on the pre-lexical level of spoken word recognition. For both Seoul dialect speakers and Daegu dialect speakers, pitch and length did not affect the syllable detection processes. This result implies that there is little effect of pitch and length in pre-lexical processing. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task was used to see the effect of pitch and length on the lexical access level of spoken word recognition. In this experiment, word frequency (low and high) as well as pitch and length was manipulated. The results showed that pitch and length information did not play an important role for Seoul dialect speakers, but that it did affect lexical decision processing for Daegu dialect speakers. Pitch and length seem to affect lexical access during the word recognition process of Daegu dialect speakers.

• MALSORI
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• no.67
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• pp.61-77
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to blow the characteristics of disfluency in childhood. The subjects were 144 normal children at the age of between 3 to 8 years who lived in Seoul. All the subjects provided spontaneous conversational speech samples during free-play interactions with their friends. We investigated the patterns and the frequency of disfluency and its relevance with subject's age, speaking rate and MLU(mean length of utterance). The results of this study can be summarized as follows. (1) There was no difference in the frequency of disfluency with the speaker's age or speaking rate. (2) Interjection was the most frequently occurring pattern of disfluency. (3) Prolongation, revision, interjection increased with age while part-word repetition, single-syllable word repetition, multi-syllable word repetition decreased gradually. (4) A significant effect of MLU on the frequency of disfluencies were demonstrated. The regression analysis has shown that more disfluencies occurred in utterances of children whose MLU is longer.