The Resolution of Visual Noise in Word Recognition

This study examined lexical processing in English by native speakers of Korean and Chinese, compared to that of native speakers of English, using normal, alternated, and inverse fonts. Sixty four adult students participated in a lexical decision task. The findings demonstrated similarities and differences in accuracy and latency among the three L1 groups. The participants, regardless of L1, had a greater advantage in nonwords than words for the normal fonts because they were able to efficiently detect the illegal letter strings. However, word advantages were observed in the visually distorted stimuli (i.e., alternated and inverse fonts). These results were explained from the perspectives of the theory of psycholinguistic grain size, L1-L2 distance, and the mechanism of familiarity discrimination. The native speakers of Chinese were more sensitive to visual distortions than the Korean counterpart, suggesting that the linguistic template established in L1 might play a role in word processing in English.