Phonological activation in Korean word recognition between Korean native speakers and Japanese-Korean and Chinese-Korean bilingual speakers: Evidence from event-related potentials

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to explore the differences of real-time processing in word recognition according to the application of Korean-specific phonological rules among Korean native speakers, Japanese-Korean bilinguals, and Chinese-Korean bilinguals through the Event-Related Potentials (ERP) analysis. Methods: Subjects were 15 native Korean speakers and 27 bilingual speakers: 13 Japanese-Korean and 14 Chinese-Korean speakers who learning Korean as a second language. They were asked to judge whe-ther the pronunciation of the visual stimulus word was identical to the corresponding auditory stimulus word. Results: All three groups showed a significant difference in both the judgment accuracy (%) and reaction time (ms) when the phonological rules were applied. In other words, the judgment accuracy was higher and reaction time was faster under the condition of applying the phonological rules than the condition without the phonological rules. ERP analysis after the visual stimulus presentation show that a significant difference among three groups and between two conditions was in amplitudes of N250. After the auditory stimulus, a significant difference between two conditions was found in amplitudes of N400. Conclusion: The results indicated that by increasing exposure time to Korean and learning more words with the phonological rules, they are likely to make identical grapheme-phoneme processing to that of native speakers.