Effects of orthography in the picture-word task: Evidence from Japanese scripts

Abstract The picture-word task presents participants with a number of pictured objects together written distractor word superimposed upon each picture, and their is to name the depicted object while ignoring word. Depending on specific picture combination, various effects, including identity facilitation effect (e.g., DOG + dog ) semantic interference GOAT cow ), are often observed. response patterns in terms naming latencies reflect mechanisms underlying lexical selection speech production. Research using this method, however, has typically focused alphabetic languages, or involved bilingual populations, making it difficult specifically investigate orthographic effects isolation. In paper, we report five experiments investigating role orthography by varying script (using multiscriptal language Japanese, pseudohomophonic spellings English) across three different populations (Japanese monolinguals, Japanese-English bilinguals, English monolinguals), both effect. results generally show that magnitude affected even within single language. findings discussed relation current theories