Auditory Recognition of Chinese-Japanese Cognates and Homographs in Proficient Chinese Learners of Japanese: An Experimental Test Using Lexical Decision Task on Japanese Kanji Words

The present study investigated the auditory recognition of Chinese-Japanese cognates and homographs in proficient Chinese learners of Japanese. The participants were asked to perform an auditory lexical decision task. in which the phonological similarities and semantic differences between Chinese and Japanese were manipulated. The facilitatory effect of phonological similarity was observed with homographs, and the inhibitory effect of the homographs was observed with words of low phonological similarity. These results differ from those of Fei (2014). who investigated auditory recognition of Chinese-Japanese cognates and homographs in Chinese learners of intermediate Japanese. The findings of the present study suggest that among proficient learners. Japanese phonological representation of high phonological similarity is strongly linked with the Japanese meaning. These results also suggest that the Chinese meaning (inhibitory effect) is activated when Chinese learners process homographs