Transposition Effects in an Aksharic Writing System: The Case of Hindi

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Transposition effects (TEs) are a psycholinguistic phenomenon used to investigate visual word recognition.
• Hindi orthography is characterized by 'akshars,' which group letters into open syllables, posing questions about functional reading units.
• Understanding how Hindi readers process orthographic units is crucial for cross-linguistic research on reading.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if letters (consonants and vowel diacritics) and akshars are functional units for Hindi readers.
• To investigate the impact of Hindi's aksharic orthography on visual word recognition processes.
• To ascertain whether Hindi readers process their script alphabetically or in larger syllabic units.

Main Methods:

• Three visual word recognition experiments were conducted with native Hindi-speaking adults.
• Unprimed lexical decision tasks were used to measure response times and accuracy.
• Transposed-nonwords (e.g., 'psate' from 'paste') and replaced-nonwords (e.g., 'pzute') were presented to elicit transposition effects.

Main Results:

• Significant transposition effects were observed for consonant letters and matra (vowel diacritic) letters across experiments.
• Transposition effects were also found for 'CM' akshars, though these results are considered tentative.
• The findings indicate that Hindi readers treat individual consonant and matra letters as functional units.

Conclusions:

• Hindi readers process consonant and matra letters as functional units, supporting an alphabetic reading strategy.
• The aksharic grouping of letters in Hindi does not preclude readers from accessing constituent graphemes.
• These results suggest that Hindi is read alphabetically, challenging assumptions based solely on its syllabic orthography.