Effects of age and word frequency on Korean visual word recognition: Evidence from a web-based large-scale lexical-decision task.

The present study examined age differences in word-frequency effects in Korean visual word recognition through a large-scale, web-based lexical-decision task. Four hundred ninety-seven adult Korean speakers in their 20s through 60s participated in the task, in which they decided the lexicality of 120 Korean words varying in frequency and 120 nonwords. Overall, both lexical-decision accuracy and response times increased with age, and more frequent words were recognized more rapidly than less frequent words. We also found significant effects of participants' reading skill as well as age of acquisition of words. Crucially, despite older adults' generally slower reaction times, there was no hint of any interaction between participant age and word frequency on lexical-decision times. This result adds to the literature on age-related changes in visual word recognition and provides evidence for stable word-frequency effect across the adult age spectrum. These findings are discussed with different hypotheses of lexical access and aging proposed in the literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Proficiency versus lexical processing efficiency as a measure of L2 lexical quality: Individual differences in word-frequency effects in L2 visual word recognition.

This study investigated Korean-English second language (L2) speakers' recognition of high- and low-frequency English words and compared two individual difference measures in their role of representing lexical quality in L2: cloze test scores and inverse efficiency scores (IES; response latency corrected for the amount of errors committed), obtained from lexical decision on a separate set of words. Cloze test scores aimed to assess general L2 proficiency, whereas IES was purported to measure lexical processing efficiency. 109 adult Korean-English L2 speakers participated in the study. Results showed significant main effects of word frequency, cloze test scores, and IES on lexical decision times, replicating previous findings and confirming the predictions of the lexical quality hypothesis. Crucially, IES was revealed to be a better measure of individual differences in L2 lexical quality than were cloze test scores. These findings suggest that lexical quality (which can be operationalized in terms of online lexical processing efficiency) comprises a distinct subdomain of language skills on its own, which cannot be measured in full using conventional language proficiency tests.

Reading spaced and unspaced Korean text: Evidence from eye-tracking during reading.

In written Korean, spaces appear between phrasal units ("eojeols"). In Experiment 1, participants read sentences in which space information had been manipulated. Results indicated that removing spaces or replacing them with a symbol hindered reading, but this effect was not as disruptive as previously found in English. Experiment 2 presented sentences varying in the proportion of eojeols that ended with postpositional particles as well as the presence/absence of spaces. Results showed that space removal interfered with reading, but its effects were weaker when the sentence contained more postpositional particles. This suggests that postpositional particles provide an extra cue to word segmentation in Korean texts. These findings are discussed in relation to the unique characteristics of the Korean writing system and to the models of eye-movement control during reading in different languages.

Effects of Native Translation Frequency and L2 Proficiency on L2 word Recognition: Evidence from Korean Speakers of English as a Foreign Language.

The goal of this study was to examine how the lexical characteristics of L1 translated words affect L2 word recognition by Korean speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different English proficiency levels. To this end, we conducted a lexical decision task, in which participants decided whether English strings were words or nonwords. The experiment had three critical conditions: (1) English words that only had a loanword translation in Korean (e.g., card), (2) English words whose native word translation had a lower frequency than their loanword translation (e.g., coat), and (3) English words whose native word translation had a higher frequency than their loanword translation (e.g., cash). Results showed that English words whose native word translations in Korean were of high frequency were recognized faster than those with low frequency native word translations. More interestingly, the L1 native word frequency effect was stronger for speakers with lower English proficiency than for more proficient EFL speakers. These findings are discussed with respect to L2 lexical processing models.

Parafoveal processing of underlying phonological information during Korean sentence reading.

The question of whether phonological information is integrated through the parafovea has remained unanswered particularly in Korean sentence reading. The current study used homophones with identical underlying phonological forms but with different orthography to examine phonological preview benefit effects in Korean. In an eye-tracking experiment using the boundary paradigm, target fixations were shorter (a) when the preview-target pairs were identical than when they were unrelated, (b) when the pairs were orthographically similar than when they were unrelated, and most importantly, (c) when the pairs were phonologically identical than when they were phonologically similar but different. These results indicate that underlying phonological information of a word, aside from orthographic information, is integrated through parafoveal preview during Korean sentence reading.

Prosodic cue weighting in the processing of ambiguous sentences by native English listeners and Korean listeners of English.

Differences in the perception of segmental contrasts by native and non-native listeners have been analyzed as the results of language-specific weightings of acoustic cues in their perception grammar [e.g., Escudero and Boersma, Stud. Second Lang. Acquis. 26, 551-585 (2004)]. However, less attention has been paid to the weighting of prosodic cues. This study investigated the relative importance of four prosodic cues-word duration, pauses, pitch, and intensity-in the resolution of English syntactic ambiguity by native English listeners and Korean learners of English. In a forced-choice processing task, English listeners' disambiguation relied most heavily on pitch, followed by pause and intensity cues, whereas pauses were the only heavily weighted cue for Korean listeners, indicating an influence from their native language. Moreover, Korean listeners' use of prosody for disambiguation was found to be influenced by their age of English acquisition and English proficiency.

Prosodic Disambiguation in First and Second Language Production: English and Korean.

This study investigates the use of prosodic cues for syntactic ambiguity resolution by first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers. In a production experiment, sentences with relative clause attachment ambiguity were elicited in three language conditions: native English speakers' L1 productions as well as Korean-English bilingual speakers' L1 Korean and L2 English productions. The results show that English uses both boundary marking (pause) and relative word prominence (elevated pitch and intensity) for disambiguation, while Korean mainly relies on boundary marking (pre-boundary lengthening and pause). The bilingual speakers have learned to use the English phonological categories such as pitch accents for disambiguation, but their use of phonetic cues to realize these categories still differed from that of native English speakers. In addition, they did not show a significant use of boundary cues. These results are discussed in relation to the typological differences between the prosody of English and of Korean.

Data mining of micrornas in breast carcinogenesis which may be a potential target for cancer prevention.

The microRNAs (miRNAs) negatively regulate the stability and translation of target messenger RNAs by selectively binding. It has been implicated in diverse processes such as cellular differentiation, cell-cycle control, apoptosis, and carcinogenesis. Examination of tumor-specific miRNA expression profiles has revealed wide spread dysregulation of these molecules in diverse cancers. The available genomic bulk evidences were extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas by using IluminaGA_miRNASeq platform in human breast cancer samples. After mining collected data, group of each miRNA ID was analyzed through five D/Bs (mirWalk, miranda, mirDB, RNA22, and TargetScan) on predicted and validated miRNA targets. Oncogenes known to have a high correlation with breast cancer (C-myc, HER2, cyclin D-1, N-RAS, FGF-4, FGF-3, BRCA1, and BRCA2) are subject in this study to select their relevant miRNAs. Function of miRNA regulation will be essential to achieve a complete understanding of carcinogenesis and these miRNAs would be potential target for breast cancer prevention.