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Words Written in Kana Are Named Faster Than the Same Words Written in Kanji

1980; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/002383098002300201

1756-6053

Laurie Beth Feldman, M. T. Turvey,

Subtitles and Audiovisual Media

Two adult Japanese named colors written in Kanji, a logographic orthography, and in Kana, a syllabary. Although colors are more frequently written in the Kanji form and although Kanji are more compact graphic representations of words in general, latency to vocalization was consistently less for the Kana. This superiority is attributed to the closer relation of Kana to phonology and, therefore, to speech. The demonstrated greater facility for naming Kana accords with observations in the literature that very familiar visual configurations are consistently named faster when they conform to a phonographic principle than when they do not.