Word recognition in Serbo-Croatian is phonologically analytic

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Serbo-Croatian is a language with two alphabets: Roman and Cyrillic.
• Bialphabetic individuals can read both scripts, presenting unique challenges and insights into reading processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of phonological ambiguity in letter strings on lexical decision-making in Serbo-Croatian bialphabetic readers.
• To determine if the reading strategy employed is analytic or holistic.

Main Methods:

• A lexical-decision task was administered to bialphabetic Serbo-Croatian readers.
• Stimuli included letter strings with unique and ambiguous (Roman/Cyrillic) transcriptions, comprising both real words and pseudowords.

Main Results:

• Letter strings with dual alphabet readings (ambiguous) resulted in significantly longer decision latencies compared to unique transcriptions.
• This phonological-ambiguity effect was observed for both words and pseudowords, though more pronounced for real words.
• The magnitude of the effect correlated with the number and distribution of ambiguous characters within the strings.

Conclusions:

• Lexical decision in Serbo-Croatian necessitates a phonologically analytic reading strategy.
• The findings suggest that readers actively process phonological information to resolve script ambiguity during word recognition.