Korean Words Can Be Understood in Parallel... "Two Words Are Read Simultaneously"

A domestic study has found that Korean words are processed more efficiently in the brain than English words, and that when word pairs are frequently used together or are semantically related, 'parallel comprehension' is also possible.

This conclusion contrasts with previous studies based on the English language.

The research team led by Professor Joo Sungjun of the Department of Psychology at Pusan National University (President Choi Jaewon) recently demonstrated through experiments that, although it is generally very difficult to distribute attention simultaneously to two words and grasp their meanings, the brain can process Korean compound words or semantically related word pairs in parallel.

Professor Joo Sungjun, Pusan National University.

원본보기 아이콘

The research team presented 42 participants with word pairs that could form compounds such as "nun-saram" (snowman), semantically related pairs such as "yeonpil-jiugae" (pencil-eraser), and unrelated pairs such as "gawi-madang" (scissors-yard), and asked them to perform a living-nonliving classification task. The results showed that, in the case of related word pairs, participants were able to process both words in parallel, demonstrating a significant improvement in recognition compared to single-task conditions.

The researchers explained that these results are attributable to the "syllabic block" system of Hangul, the one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and letters, and the regular spelling rules, all of which are advantageous for parallel word recognition. In particular, for words that are frequently used together, the brain tended to automatically activate the other word when recognizing one of them.

Professor Joo Sungjun stated, "In semantically related word pairs, one word facilitates the recognition of the other, and this shows that the unique writing system of Hangul has a positive effect on the reading process."

However, he cautioned, "These results should not be equated with the possibility of speed reading," emphasizing that "parallel processing is limited to cases where there is a strong semantic connection between words, and sequential processing is still necessary for precise comprehension of the entire text."

This study was conducted as part of the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea's research support project, and the results were published in the July issue of the American Psychological Association (APA) journal, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The first author is Dr. Yoo Sanga, a research fellow at the Department of Psychology at Pusan National University, and the corresponding author is Professor Joo Sungjun.

The research team plans to further clarify the differences in reading mechanisms across languages in the future, contributing to various practical fields such as multilingual education and cognitive rehabilitation for dyslexia.

© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.