Reading and Writing (2007) 20:413–439
DOI 10.1007/s11145-006-9036-8

Ó Springer 2007

Rebounding activation caused by lexical homophonyin the processing of Japanese two-kanji compound words
KATSUO TAMAOKA1
International Student Center, Hiroshima University, 1-1, 1-chome, Kagamiyama,
Higashihiroshima, 739-8523, Japan
Abstract. The present study investigated the eﬀects of lexical homophony on the processing of Japanese two-kanji compound words. Experiment 1 showed that participants
took longer to perform lexical decisions for words with a high degree of lexical
homophony than those with no homophony. Interestingly, the same inhibitory trend
was found in the naming task of Experiment 2. Participants took longer to name words
with a high degree of lexical homophony than those with no homophony. The consistency of an inhibitory eﬀect through the two experiments suggests that during naming
and lexical decisions for Japanese two-kanji compound words, an orthographic representation activates the phonological representation, which then leads to a rebounding
activation of orthographic representations of homophonic forms.
Key words: Inhibitory eﬀects, Lexical decision, Lexical homophony, Naming,
Rebounding activation

Introduction
Many homophones are found in the Japanese language among two-kanji
compound words. The sound /koRka/ (/R/ refers to a moraic long vowel),for example, can be written several ways, such as 硬 貨 (‘a coin’), 高 価(‘valuable’), 校 歌 (‘a school song’), 効 果 (‘eﬀect’), 降 下 (‘falling’), 工 科(‘technology’), 高 架 (‘a high bridge’), and 硬 化 (‘solidiﬁcation’). These
compound words, all having the same sound /koRka/, are often seen in
written Japanese and yet have very diﬀerent meanings. Simultaneous
activations of these homophonic words seem not to have any beneﬁts for the
performance of lexical decision and naming. Thus, if lexical homophonyhas an inhibitory eﬀect on cognitive processing, this may suggest that when
one of these words is processed, all other orthographic representations of its
homophones are activated by its phonological representation without any
speciﬁc beneﬁt to the task. Consequently, the present study investigated theeﬀects of lexical homophony on the processing of Japanese two-kanji
compound words using simple tasks of both lexical decision and naming.

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KATSUO TAMAOKA

Contradictory Claims on Homophonic Eﬀects
Early studies on homophonic eﬀects were conducted in the English
language. Rubenstein, Lewis and Rubenstein (1971) found that the lexicaldecision times for homophonic words (e.g., ‘weak’ and ‘week’)were longer than for nonhomophonic words with the same word
frequency (e.g., ‘clay,’ which has the same word frequency as ‘weak’). The
study explained that this delay was caused by the process of comparing
homophonic words to identify the orthographically appropriate lexical
entry. After activating the phonological representation of [wi:k] from theorthographic representation of ‘weak,’ homophonic words such as ‘week’
must be activated by the sound [wi:k] in order for an interference eﬀect
from the visually-presented homophonic word to occur. This process
requires extra orthographic checking time.
Later, multiple studies of word recognition within alphabetic languages indicated phonological involvement during cognitive processing ofwords (e.g., Coltheart, Patterson, & Leahy, 1994; Lukatela, Lukatela, &Turvey, 1993; Perfetti, Bell, & Delaney, 1988; Pollatsek, Lesch, Morris, &Rayner, 1992; Van Orden, Johnston, & Hale, 1988) and sentence comprehension (e.g., Bosman & de Groot, 1996; Coltheart & Laxon, 1990;
Coltheart, Avons, Masterson, & Laxon, 1991). However, ﬁndings of thesestudies done on the processing of the nonalphabetic script of Chinesecharacters provided fodder for debate on this issue. One group of studies
suggested that Chinese native speakers process characters from orthography to meaning without any activation of phonological representations(e.g., Chen, d’Arcais, & Cheung, 1995; Chen, Yung, & Ng, 1988; Hoosain& Osgood, 1983; Peng, Guo, & Zhang, 1985; Tzeng, Hung, & Wang,
1977). On the contrary, another group of studies argued that phonological representations are indeed activated during the processing of Chinesecharacters without any speciﬁc beneﬁt to the task (e.g., Cheng & Shih,1988; Leck, Weeks, & Chen, 1995; Perfetti & Zhang, 1991, 1995; Perfetti,
Zhang, & Berent, 1992; Pollatsek, Tan, & Rayner, 2000; Tan, Hoosain, &Peng, 1995; Tan, Hoosain, & Siok, 1996; Xu, Pollatsek, & Potter, 1999;
Zhang & Perfetti, 1993; Zhang, Perfetti & Yang, 1999; Zhou & MarslenWilson, 1999a, b). Despite the extensive focus given to phonologicalinvolvement in the recognition of Chinese characters and words, only few
attempts have been made concerning phonological activity during theprocessing of Japanese kanji compound words.

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

415

Feedback Phonology and Rebounding Activation
In order to discuss the phonological processing of Japanese words, it isessential to look closely at the interaction between phonology andorthography in general. The two-way street model of feedforward andfeedback phonology proposed by Stone, Vanhoy and Van Orden (1997)
provides the framework for mapping out such interaction. Their model isunique in that there are no closed loops during lexical processing.
According to this concept, a series of activations occurs between
orthography and phonology. The visual input of a word activates anorthographic representation, which further serves to activate its phonological representation. This phonological representation, in turn,rebounds to activate additional orthographic representations of lexical
homophones. Within the framework of this two-way street phonologicalprocessing model, Stone et al. (1997) found that words with a high degreeof lexical homophony, which are considered feedback inconsistent inmappings from phonology to orthography, display an inhibitory eﬀect.
They explained that this eﬀect was produced by the suppression ofactivated lexical homophonic forms.
The study by Stone et al. (1997) provides an interesting perspective anda processing model for homophonic eﬀects for interpreting the context of
the Japanese language. If lexical homophony aﬀects the cognitive processing of words, the following series of activations are hypothesized totake place when applied to Japanese homophones as shown in Figure 1.
Since homophonic eﬀects seem to show no beneﬁt for performance of thelexical decision and naming tasks, activations must be generated to be
simultaneously distributed within and across the orthographic and phonological lexica, and to some degree, the semantic lexicon. Thus, todescribe a series of possible activations for Japanese homophonic words,
Figure 1 adapted the parallel distributed processing (PDP) model,
depicted for Japanese kanji processing in Ijuin, Fushimi, Patterson andTatsumi (1999), Ijuin, Fushimi and Tatsumi (2002), and Tamaoka (2005).
The details of homophonic activations are as follows. When 硬 貨
meaning ‘coin’ (one of the orthographic representations for /koRka/) isvisually presented to a native Japanese speaker, this visual input activates
its orthographic representation, which further raises the activation levelof the phonological representation of /koRka/. In turn, this lexical phonology further rebounds to activate lexical orthographic homophones
sharing the same sound /koRka/ such as the original input word 硬 貨
and other homophones of 高 価 (‘valuable’), 効 果 (‘eﬀect’), 硬 化(‘solidiﬁcation’) and so on. Since this series of activations starts fromorthography to phonology and rebounds back to orthography, this could

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KATSUO TAMAOKA

Figure 1. Rebounding activation for Japanese homophonic words.

be hypothetically considered as rebounding activations. As such, it isassumed that many lexical homophonic cases displaying the cognitive
inclination of rebounding activations would be found among Japanesewords.
Previous Studies on Homophonic Eﬀects in the Japanese Language
A series of experiments on homophonic eﬀects with Japanese words(Wydell, Patterson, & Humphreys, 1993) was conducted using a semantic
categorization task with lexical homophones. In one such experiment, thecategory name of ‘good results’ in Japanese was shown to a participant.
Following this category, a target homophonic word of either 成 果 (‘anachievement,’ /seRka/) as a correctly categorized word or the same soundof homophonic word 青 果 (‘fruits and vegetables,’ /seRka/) as anincorrectly categorized word was presented. Compared to counter stimuli
of nonhomophonic words (e.g., 大 臣 ‘a minister’ /daiziN/ or 大 根 ‘whiteradish’ /daikoN/ for the semantic category of ‘a member of the Government’), Wydell et al. (1993) found a signiﬁcant homophonic eﬀect. The
homophonic words showed longer reaction times and higher error rates
than the nonhomophonic words. Likewise, they found a signiﬁcant eﬀectof visual similarity in kanji orthography. Drawing upon both the eﬀects
of homophony and orthographic similarity, Wydell et al. suggested that

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

417

semantic representations of kanji were activated from parallel activationsof both orthographic and phonological representations.
The proposal by Wydell et al. (1993) supports homophonic eﬀects atthe semantic level. The orthographic representation, 成果 not only raises
the activation level of the semantic representation of ‘an achievement’ but
also activates its phonological representation /seRka/. Again, the phonological representation, /seRka/ serves to increase the activation level ofsemantic representation. At the same time, the phonological representation /seRka/ must rebound to activate a series of orthographic representations that share the same sound, possibly 青 果 (‘fruit andvegetables’), 聖 歌 (‘a hymn’) and 盛 夏 (‘high summer’), which in turnactivates their semantic representations although their activation levels
could be weak. A replication study conducted by Sakuma, Sasanuma,
Tatsumi and Masaki (1998) revealed congruent ﬁndings.
The studies of Wydell et al. (1993) and Sakuma et al. (1998) foundhomophonic eﬀects of Japanese two-kanji compound words using asemantic categorization task. In this task, intense activations occur
between the orthographic and semantic lexica. A visual input of a word
activates its orthographic representation, which further causes its phonological activation and rebounds back to activate multiple orthographic
representations of homophonic words sharing the same sound. Since thesemantic task requires semantic activations, these homophonic words
may also raise activation levels of semantic representations of multiple
homophones, which in turn create further intensive inter-activations
between the orthographic and semantic lexica, which results in slowing
down the processing of lexical items with multiple homophones. It could
be also possible that the phonological representation directly raised some
activation levels of homophonic words in the semantic lexicon without
rebounding back to orthographic representations. However, the semantic
categorization task (Sakuma et al., 1998; Wydell et al., 1993) involves anactivation process too complex to clearly elucidate exactly what lexical
homophony is aﬀecting in word processing. As Stone et al. (1997)
explained, homophonic eﬀects display an inhibitory eﬀect mostly during
inter-activations between phonology to orthography, with little involvement of semantics. Therefore, the present study utilized a much simpler
approach of lexical decision and naming to focus only on this aspect.

Outline of the Present Experiments and their Purpose
The present study required participants to perform a lexical decision task
in Experiment 1 and a naming task in Experiment 2, focusing on

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KATSUO TAMAOKA

two-kanji compound words of varying degrees of lexical homophony. In
both experiments, it was assumed that rebounding activation between
orthography and phonology would be in play, with a visual input of asingle word activating its orthographic representation, which would further activate its phonological representation and then rebound back toraise the activation levels of orthographic representations of its homophonic words. This series of rebounding activation was expected to havelittle beneﬁt for performing the tasks of lexical decision and naming. The
two experiments together would thus further examine the eﬀects of lexical
homophony described above.

Experiment 1: Lexical Decision
Experiment 1 examined whether or not the degree of lexical homophones
aﬀects the visual recognition of Japanese two-kanji compound words
using the lexical decision task. All words presented to participants hadvarying degrees of lexical homophony from high to none at all. If the
hypothetical concept of rebounding activation takes place, the results ofthis experiment should display an inhibitory eﬀect on the processing ofwords with a high degree of lexical homophony in comparison to words
with no lexical homophony.

MethodParticipants
Eighteen graduate and undergraduate students (13 females and 5 males),
all native speakers of Japanese, participated in this experiment. Ages
ranged from 19 years and 1 month to 27 years and 1 month. The average
age was 21 years and 3 months on the day of testing.

Stimulus Items
For the lexical decision task, two types of stimuli (54 real words in total)
were selected for the correct ‘Yes’ responses while three types of stimuli(54 pseudo-words and nonwords in total) were chosen for the correct ‘No’
responses. A complete description of all types of stimuli is listed in the
Appendix. Since there were many inﬂuential factors that could haveaﬀected the cognitive processing of the stimulus items, careful selection

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

419

was crucial for Experiments 1 and 2. A detailed list of these factors isprovided in Table 1.

Stimulus Items for Correct ‘Yes’ Responses—Real Words
Stimulus items for correct ‘Yes’ responses were selected from two-kanji
compound words with varying degrees of lexical homophony. The degreeof lexical homophony was identiﬁed by the number of two-kanji compound words sharing the same pronunciation. Only words constructed of
two kanji from Jooyoo Kanji (the 1945 basic Japanese kanji) were used inthis experiment and evaluated for lexical homophony. Rare words written
in kanji beyond the 1945 basic kanji were excluded from the experiment.
More than four commonly used words sharing the same sound wereregarded as having a high degree of lexical homophony. A counter group,
two-kanji compound words with no lexical homophony, was also
selected.
As shown in Table 1, the two groups of correct ‘Yes’ responses werematched across 18 possible factors, which could aﬀect cognitive processing. There were no signiﬁcant diﬀerences in these 18 factors when
examined by t-tests between nonhomophones and multiple homophones.
None of the 18 possible inﬂuential factors diﬀered signiﬁcantly between
words with high and no lexical homophones (see t-values in Table 1).
Thus, none of these factors would aﬀect the ﬁndings of the present study.
The 18 inﬂuential factors are explained in detail below.
(1) Word frequency (Amano & Kondo, 2000; National Institute forJapanese Language, 1973) in the inﬂuential factors #1 and #2 described inTable 1 (hereafter, factors refer to an item number in Table 1). The word
frequency index in 1973 provided an index of word frequency from a totalof 1,967,575 words printed in three major Japanese newspapers (Asahi,
Mainichi and Yomiuri) during 1966. According to this index, the two
stimulus groups had very similar averages (8.56 occurrences for words
with a high degree of lexical homophony and 8.37 occurrences for words
with no lexical homophony). Likewise, the word frequency index
provided by Amano and Kondo (2000, or CD-ROM version, 2003b)
provided no diﬀerence between the two groups.
(2) Familiarity in the inﬂuential factor #3: The database of Amano andKondo (1999, or CD-ROM version, 2003a) provides a subjective index ofword familiarity, measured by asking native speakers to check 1-to-7point scales. According to Amano and Kondo (1999, 2003a), the meanfamiliarity for stimulus words with no homophony was 5.52 while themean of words with multiple homophony was 5.28.

1. Word frequency (1973)
8.37
2. Word frequency
3028(2000, 2003b)
3. Familiarity (1999, 2003a)
5.52
4. Polysemy
1.52
5. Abstractness versus
4.32
concreteness6. Number of morae
3.22
in stimuli
7. Number of strokes
18.59
to write stimuli
8. Single kanji
1.80
frequency (1976)
9. Single kanji
32469
frequency (1998)

治安/tiaN/ 視覚 /sikaku/# Inﬂuential factors

19.89
1.22

t = 0.51t = )0.22

18.04

1.88
t = )0.14

3.50t = )0.95

3.37

33327

4.46

22457

–
–

t = 1.79
t = 1.72
t = )0.03

5.28
1.26
4.33

–
10855

t = )0.05
t = 0.44

8.56
5894

1.23

20.17

3.50

4.61

21522

–
–

–
13730

1.24

20.00

3.56

21470

–
–
–

–

写回 /sjakai/ 歌 定/katei/ 面残only onen = 18F = 0.02

F = 0.00

F = 0.02

F = 0.06––
t = )0.84–t = )0.81

Values of t-test or
F value ofNonsense-words
one-way
ANOVA n = 54

More than Randomn = 18n = 18Nonen = 27

Number of stimuli
and examples

More thann = 27

Real words

Degree of lexical
homophony

Nonwords

Correct ‘Yes’ responses t value of t-test n = 54 Correct ‘No’ responses

Response type

Table 1. Possible inﬂuential factors on the processing of two-kanji compound words for Experiments 1 and 2.

420
KATSUO TAMAOKACD-ROM kanji
frequency (1998)
Number of kanji
constituents
Radical frequency
On-reading
kanji frequency
Kun-reading
kanji frequency
On-reading ratio
Number of pronunciations
Type frequencyof kanji lexical productivity
Token frequency ofkanji lexical productivity

486.30156.645.15
232.44

1664

60.11
1405

4.07

47267

436.74165.265.19
200.48

1764

50.59
1439

4.04

47937

160.71
4.56
132.61
288.11t = )0.06

1167

46.22
916

4.33

33203

t = 0.82
t = 0.89
t = 0.56t = )0.32

t = 0.84
t = )0.11

t = 0.18

t = )0.08

322.61

174.254.50
167.44

1152

72.00
1041

4.28

30680

351.89170.30
5.50
163

1191

55.72
1069

4.33

29800

F = 0.25

F = 0.66
F = 1.82
F = 0.65

F = 0.01

F = 1.26
F = 0.15

F = 0.02

F = 0.09

Note 1: Figures from the 7th to 18th factors were calculated for two kanji together.
Note 2: Years of inﬂuential factors in the table refer to the sources of lexical and kanji databases. The details are provided in the text andreferences.
Note 3: Nonwords were not used for the naming task in Experiment 2.
Note 4: None of the t-tests indicated signiﬁcant diﬀerences, and none of the ANOVAs showed main eﬀects.

18.

15.
16.
17.

14.

12.
13.

11.

10.

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

421

422

KATSUO TAMAOKA(3) Polysemy in the inﬂuential factor #4: Some words have multiple
meanings which are also known to aﬀect word processing (Hino, Lupker,& Pexman, 2002; Hino, Lupker, Sears, & Ogawa, 1998). Thus, using a
Japanese dictionary (Kabashima, Uegaki, Sonoda, & Satake, 1999), a
number of meanings were checked for each stimulus. The mean numberof meanings for stimulus words with no homophony was 1.52 while themean of words with multiple homophones was 1.26.
(4) Abstractness versus concreteness in the inﬂuential factor #5: Whenpresented without context, words representing concrete ideas or concepts
are processed faster and more accurately in naming and lexical decisiontasks than words representing abstract ideas or concepts (e.g., Bleasdale,
1987; Kroll & Merves, 1986; Schwanenﬂugel & Shoben, 1983). Because ofthis, the degree of concreteness and abstractness of each word was controlled in the present study. Words were placed on a 7-point continuumwith ‘7’ being labeled as ‘very abstract’ and ‘1’ as being ‘very concrete.’
The purpose of this was to test the concreteness (or abstractness) of word
meaning. The averages of the abstractness–concreteness scale were 4.33
for the words which had a high degree of lexical homophony and 4.32 forthe words which had no homophony.
(5) Number of morae in the inﬂuential factor #6: The average numberof morae contained in the words in each stimulus group was 3.37 morae
for words with a high degree of lexical homophony and 3.22 for words
with no homophony.
(6) Number of strokes in the inﬂuential factor #7: Orthographic
complexity has an eﬀect on the processing of Chinese characters (e.g.,
Leong, Cheng, & Mulcahy, 1987) and Japanese kanji (e.g., Tamaoka &Takahashi, 1999). Thus, the number of strokes needed to write each word
was also controlled to within a half-stroke between the two groups,
ranging from 18.04 strokes for words with a high degree of lexical
homophony to 18.59 strokes for words with no homophony.
(7) Kanji frequencies in 1978 and 1998 indicated in inﬂuential factors#8 to #10: The frequency of occurrence of kanji in written materials also
aﬀects the processing of two-kanji compound words (Tamaoka &Hatsuzuka, 1995). The National Institute for Japanese Language (1976)
calculated the frequency of kanji occurrences from the words printed in
the Asahi, Yomiuri and Mainichi newspapers during the year 1966.
According to this index, the frequency average of two-kanji making up
compound words in the present study was kept to a narrow range of 1.88
(per thousand printed kanji) for words with a high degree of lexical
homophony and 1.80 (per thousand printed kanji) for words with nohomophony. A newer index of kanji frequency was provided by
Yokoyama, Sasahara, Nozaki and Long (1998) based on kanji in theEFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY423

Tokyo edition of the Asahi newspaper printed in 1993. Tamaoka, Kirsner,
Yanase, Miyaoka and Kawakami (2002) calculated Pearson productmoment correlations to ﬁnd the relationship between frequency ofoccurrence of the 1945 basic kanji (n = 1945) for 1966 and 1993. The
correlation was r = .969, a ﬁgure, which indicates that the frequency ofoccurrence for printed kanji was stable over the 27-year period from 1966
to 1993. The index for the 1993 version provides actual numbers of kanji
occurrence. Yokoyama et al. (1998) also provided kanji frequency calculated from a much larger pool of words taken from 110,000 Asahi
newspaper articles published in 1993 and stored on CD-ROM. This index
showed averages of 47,937 occurrences for words with a high degree oflexical homophony and 47,267 for words with no homophony.
(8) Number of kanji constituents in the inﬂuential factor #11: A single
kanji is often composed of two or more constituents. Tamaoka et al.
(2002) provided an actual number of kanji constituents for the 1945 basic
Japanese basic kanji. Words with a high degree of lexical homophonyshowed an average of 4.04 constituents (for both kanji together) while
words with no lexical homophony had an average of 4.07.
(9) Radical frequency in the inﬂuential factor #12: Another particularconstituent, known as the radical, has been argued to have an eﬀect on
the processing of Japanese kanji (e.g., Leong & Tamaoka, 1995; Saito,
1997; Saito, Masuda, & Kawakami, 1998; Tamai & Abe, 1999) andChinese characters (e.g., Ho & Bryant, 1997; Ho, Wong, & Chan, 1999;
Li & Chen, 1997, 1999; Taft & Zhu, 1997). The index of radical frequency
was calculated by counting the number of 1945 basic Japanese kanji,
which share the same radical. It was found that approximately 1057 kanji(54.34%) of the 1945 basic kanji are constructed using only 24 radicals
out of 214 (Tamaoka et al., 2002; Tamaoka & Makioka, 2004). Radical
frequency average was 50.59 for words with a high degree of lexical
homophony and 60.11 for words with no lexical homophony.
(10) On-reading and Kun-reading kanji frequency in the inﬂuential
factors #13 to #14: Japanese kanji pronunciation can be divided into two
types: On-reading and Kun-reading (see details, Tamaoka, 1991, 2003).
Multiple readings of Japanese kanji could aﬀect the processing of twokanji compound words used in this study (e.g., Kayamoto, Yamada, &Takashima, 1998). Thus, the factors to be controlled were concerned withthe phonological eﬀects of kanji reading. The accumulative frequency forkanji with On-readings was calculated by summing the frequency ofoccurrence as it appeared in the 1966 editions of the Asahi, Mainichi andYomiuri newspapers (Tamaoka et al., 2002; Tamaoka & Makioka, 2004).
Kanji used for proper nouns were excluded from the calculation. The
average On-reading frequency was 1439 times for words with a high424

KATSUO TAMAOKA

degree of lexical homophony and 1405 times for words with no lexical
homophony. In the same way as for On-reading frequency, the accumulative frequency of occurrence for kanji with Kun-reading was calculated using the 1976 index of kanji frequency (Tamaoka et al., 2002;
Tamaoka & Makioka, 2004). The average Kun-reading frequency was
1764 occurrences for words with a high density of lexical homophony and1664 for words with no lexical homophony.
(11) On-reading ratio in the inﬂuential factor #15: The On-reading ratio
was calculated by dividing the accumulative On-reading frequency by theaccumulative frequency of both On- and Kun-readings added together.
The average On-reading ratio was 165.26 for words with a high degree oflexical homophony and 156.64 for words with no lexical homophony.
(12) Number of pronunciations in the inﬂuential factor #16: A single
Japanese kanji usually has more than one pronunciation. Since stimuli in
Experiment 1 were all two-kanji compound words, the average number ofdiﬀerent pronunciations for each word was calculated using the Databasefor the 1945 Basic Japanese Kanji (Tamaoka et al., 2002; Tamaoka &Makioka, 2004). The average number of pronunciations was 5.19 forwords with a high degree of lexical homophony and 5.15 for words withno lexical homophony.
(13) Type and token frequencies of kanji lexical productivity in theinﬂuential factors #17 and #18: An index of kanji productivity wasprovided by Kawakami (1997) and is included in the Database for the1945 Basic Japanese Kanji (Tamaoka et al., 2002; Tamaoka & Makioka,
2004). Kanji lexical productivity refers to the unit of one kanji combinedwith another to create two-kanji compound words. The average type
frequency of kanji lexical productivity was 200.48 for words with a highdegree of lexical homophony and 232.44 for words with no lexical
homophony. The token frequency of kanji lexical productivity wascalculated by summing all word frequencies provided by the National
Language Research Institute (1973). The totals of both sides are added
together. The average of token frequency was 436.74 for words with ahigh degree of lexical homophony and 486.30 for words with no lexical
homophony.
(14) Light verb –suru attachment (not included in Table 1): Many twokanji compound nouns can be used as a verb by simply adding the lightverb –suru. However, the light verb cannot be attached to all Japanese
nouns. It is assumed that some speciﬁc meanings possessed by nouns must
determine whether or not the light verb can be attached to them (Iida,
1987; Ito & Sugioka, 2002; Kageyama, 1996; Matsuoka, 2004; Shibatani &Kageyama, 1988; Tamaoka, Matsuoka, Sakai, & Makioka, 2005). WordEFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

425

with a high degree of homophony had 10 out of 27 items attached a lightverb while words with no homophony had 15 out of 27 items. A v2-test of
independence showed no relation between light verb attachment andhomophony [v2(1) = 1.86, p = .17].

Stimulus Items for Correct ‘No’ Responses—Nonwords
For the correct ‘No’ responses, three types of stimulus items wereselected. First, two-kanji nonwords with a high degree of lexical
homophony were created. For example, the sound /kateR/ can be written
by two kanji morphemes as 課 程 (‘a course of study’), 仮 定 (‘hypothesis’), 家 庭 (‘home’) and 過 程 (‘process’). To make a nonword withmultiple homophones, kanji such as 歌 /ka/ and 定 /teR/ were combined
to form 歌 定 /kateR/, which does not orthographically exist in Japanese.
Second, nonwords with a single homophone were created by altering realwords with no lexical homophony. Changing the individual morphemesof the real word 社 会 /sjakai/ to 写 /sja/ and 回 /kai/ created a new kanji
compound, 写 回 /sjakai/. The third category of nonwords was formed by
combining two kanji morphemes together which had no orthographic orphonological form similar to real words. Eighteen words in each of thesethree groups were used as stimuli for the ‘No’ responses of the lexicaldecision task. Possible inﬂuential factors noted in Table 1 were controlled
for the two or the three stimulus conditions of the correct ‘No’ responses.
A series of t-tests and ANOVAs on the inﬂuential factors conducted to
examine their eﬀects for correct ‘No’ responses found no signiﬁcanteﬀects. Therefore, all these factors in Table 1 were controlled, meaningthat none would interfere with or alter the ﬁndings of the present study.

Procedure
Stimuli with both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ correct responses were presented toparticipants in random order in the center of a computer screen (Toshiba,
J-3100 Plasma display) 600 milliseconds after the appearance of anasterisk ‘*’ indicating an eye ﬁxation point. Participants were instructed
to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible in deciding whether or
not they considered the item to be a word. Response was made bypressing a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ button. Twenty practice trials were given to theparticipants prior to the commencement of the actual testing.

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KATSUO TAMAOKA

Analyses and Results
The means of correct ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ reaction times and error rates for thelexical decision task are presented in Table 2. Before performing theanalysis, reaction times outside of 2.5 standard deviations in both the highand low ranges were replaced by the boundaries indicated by 2.5 standard
deviations from the individual means of participants in each category.
Only stimulus items of correct responses were used in the analyses ofreaction times. The statistical tests which follow analyze both participant(F1) and item (F2) variability.
A one-way ANOVA for repeated measures (words with a high degreeof lexical homophony versus words with no lexical homophony) was
performed on reaction times for the correct ‘Yes’ responses. Participants
made lexical decisions for words with a high degree of lexical homophony
36 milliseconds slower than for words with no lexical homophony. Thisdiﬀerence was signiﬁcant in both participant variability [F1(1,17) = 20.25,
p < .001] and item variability [F2(1,26) = 4.39, p < .05]. An inhibitory
eﬀect related to the degree of lexical homophony was observed in performance of the lexical decision task for the correct ‘Yes’ responses. The
same one-way ANOVA for repeated measures was carried out on error
rates of the same two stimulus groups. A signiﬁcant main eﬀect on error
rates was also observed in participant variability [F1(1,17) = 5.28,
p < .05] but not in item variability [F2(1,26) = 2.39, p = .13].
A one-way ANOVA for repeated measures of the three diﬀerent
stimulus types (three types of nonwords) was performed on reaction times
for lexical decision of the correct ‘No’ responses. The result indicated nosigniﬁcant main eﬀect on reaction times either in participant variability
Table 2. Means of Reaction times and error rates for lexical decision of two-kanji
compound words.
Stimulus type

Real words
Nonwords

Degree of lexical homophony

No lexical homophony
A high degree of lexical homophony
A single lexical homophone
A high degree of lexical homophonyRandom combinations of two kanji

Reactiontime (ms)Error rate (%)

M

SD

M

676
712
852
834
873

109
123
215
208
234

6.4
10.1
11.1
14.5
15.1

Note: A high degree of lexical homophony refers to stimuli with more than 4 lexical
homophonies.

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

427[F1(2,34) = 3.09, p = .08] or in item variability [F2(2,34) = 0.68,
p = .49]. The same one-way ANOVA analysis was carried out on error
rates. Again, no signiﬁcant main eﬀect was observed on the error rates
either in participant variability [F1(2,34) = 1.58, p = .22] or in item
variability [F2(2,34) = 1.91, p = .16]. The degree of lexical homophony,therefore, had no eﬀect on lexical decision of the correct ‘No’ responses.
Discussion
The lexical decision task in Experiment 1 indicated an eﬀect of lexical
homophony on the processing of real words with ‘Yes’ responses. A highdegree of lexical homophony caused an inhibitory eﬀect on performanceof the lexical decision task for Japanese words: real words with a highdegree of lexical homophony took longer to process than real words withno lexical homophony. An inhibitory eﬀect of lexical homophony was notobserved in the lexical decision of nonwords with a high degree of lexical
homophony for the correct ‘No’ responses. In sum, these ﬁndings suggestthat during the processing of the two-kanji compound words with a highdegree of lexical homophony, orthographic forms sharing the same soundare activated by rebounding activation as shown in Figure 1. Activationsof orthographic representations of multiple homophones seem to occur
without any beneﬁt to performance when deciding upon correct ‘Yes’
responses. A further investigation on lexical homophony was conductedusing the naming task in Experiment 2.
Experiment 2: Naming
Experiment 1 indicated an inhibitory eﬀect of lexical homophony on theprocessing of real words with ‘Yes’ responses. Unlike lexical decision,
performance of the naming task requires the activation of a phonologicalrepresentation when pronouncing a visually presented stimulus, but does
not necessarily require activating orthographic representations of multiple homophonic words. Thus, the presence of an inhibitory eﬀect related
to the degree of lexical homophony is further investigated using thenaming task in Experiment 2.

Participants
Eighteen graduate and undergraduate students, all native speakers ofJapanese (10 females and 8 males) participated in Experiment 2.

428

KATSUO TAMAOKA

Participants who took part in Experiment 1 were not included inExperiment 2. Ages ranged from 19 years and 8 months to 32 years and 0
months; the average age was 21 years and 7 months on the day of testing.

Stimulus Items
The same stimulus items of Experiment 1 were used for Experiment 2
except for nonwords created by randomly combining two kanji morphemes (see details in Appendix). Two types of nonwords, ones with ahigh degree of lexical homophony and ones with a single word sound were
included in this experiment. Each kanji of these nonwords often has morethan one pronunciation, so these two-kanji compound nonwords could be
pronounced in multiple ways, which were recorded as correct responses.

Procedure
Stimulus items were randomly presented to participants in the center of acomputer screen (Toshiba, J-3100 Plasma display) 600 milliseconds after
the appearance of an asterisk ‘*’ indicating an eye ﬁxation point. Speciallydesigned voice key equipment, which makes all inputs electrically highpitched ﬂat sounds, was used to avoid timing diﬀerences of initial sounds,
to turn oﬀ a reaction time measurement. Participants were instructed topronounce the items as quickly and as accurately as possible. Twenty
practice trials were given to the participants prior to the commencementof the actual testing.

Analyses and Results
The means of latencies for correctly named stimuli and error rates are presented in Table 3. Before performing the analysis, naming latencies outside of
2.5 standard deviations in both the high and low ranges were replaced by theboundaries indicated by 2.5 standard deviations from the individual means ofparticipants in each category. Only stimulus items of correct responses wereused in the analyses of naming latencies. The statistical tests which follow
analyze both participant (F1) and item (F2) variability.
A one-way ANOVA for repeated measures (real words with a highdegree of lexical homophony versus real words with no homophony) was
conducted on naming latencies. The result of the analysis showed that real

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EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

Table 3. Means of naming latencies and error rates for naming two-kanji compoundwords.
Stimulus type

Real words
Nonwords

Degree of lexical homophony

No lexical homophony
A high degree of lexical homophony
A single lexical homophony
A high degree of lexical homophony

Naminglatency(ms)

Error rate (%)

M

SD

M

670
706
987
996

123
156
244
232

5.1
6.0
27.5
25.6

Note: A high degree of lexical homophony refers to stimuli with more than 4 lexical
homophonies.

words with a high degree of lexical homophony took a signiﬁcantly
longer time to be named than those with no homophony in both participant variability [F1(1,17) = 6.20, p < .05] and item variability[F2(1,26) = 4.51, p < .05]. The error ratios indicated no signiﬁcant difference between the two homophonic conditions in both participant
analysis [F1(1,17) = 0.43, p = .50] and item analysis [F2 (1,26) = 0.14,
p = .70]. Taking the results of naming latencies into consideration, one
might reasonably deduce that there is an inhibitory eﬀect of lexical
homophony on the processing of real words during naming tasks.
It should be noted that the voice key equipment used for Experiment 2
cannot completely guarantee that all initial sounds will be treated equally(e.g., Sakuma, Fushimi, & Tatsumi, 1997; Tamaoka & Hatsuzuka, 1997;
Yamada & Tamaoka, 2003). Thus, a post hoc analysis using multiple
regression was conducted to predict naming latencies involving three
diﬀerent major initial consonants /k/, /s/ and /t/, because these consonants were used for initial sounds of multiple target lexical items. The
results conﬁrmed null eﬀects of these initial consonants. Each of three
consonants was treated as a separate variable, recorded ‘1’ if it was an
initial sound and recorded ‘0’ if it was not. The results showed that noneof these consonants was a signiﬁcant predictor [R2=.046; b = .227,
p = .145 for /k/; b = .065, p = .673 for /s/; b = ).001, p = .995 for /t/;b refers to a standardized regression coeﬃcient and p refers to probability]. Due to the absence of a signiﬁcant result, this post hoc analysis
was not applied to error rates.
The naming task in Experiment 2 also included nonwords. Nonwords
were created by exchanging the two kanji within a real compound word
for other kanji, which had the same sounds. The means of naming

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KATSUO TAMAOKA

latencies and error rates are shown in Table 3. A one-way ANOVA for
repeated measures was conducted on naming latencies. Unlike the caseof real word naming, the results indicated that nonwords with a highdegree of lexical homophony were named as fast as those with single
homophonic words, as indicated by the analyses of both participant variability [F1(1,17) = 0.09, p = .76] and item variability [F2(1,26) = 0.64,
p = .43]. Again, the same ANOVA was conducted on the error rates
of naming nonwords. The error rates indicated no signiﬁcant diﬀerence between the two conditions of lexical homophony in either
participant variability [F1(1,17) = 0.44, p = .52] or item variability [F2(1,26) = 0.06, p = .81]. Consequently, the degree of lexical
homophony had no eﬀect on the naming of nonwords. Since no signiﬁcant results were found, a post hoc analysis of a multiple regression was
not conducted for naming of nonwords.
Discussion
As predicted by the results from the lexical decision task in Experiment 1,
the naming task indicated an inhibitory eﬀect on the cognitive processingof real words. Real words with a high degree of lexical homophony took
longer to name than real words with no lexical homophony. Therefore,
the results of the naming task in Experiment 2 as well as those ofExperiment 1 support the processing model of rebounding activation
between orthography and phonology, as depicted in Figure 1.
General Discussion—Evaluating the Concept of Rebounding Activation
As described in Figure 1, the present study investigated rebounding activation between orthography and phonology at the lexical level created by
the lexical homophony of two-kanji compound words.
The lexical decision task in Experiment 1 showed that lexical
homophony displays an inhibitory eﬀect on the cognitive processing ofreal words. Real words with a high degree of lexical homophony takelonger to be processed for lexical decision than real words with no lexical
homophony. Furthermore, Experiment 2 used the naming task to investigate the homophonic eﬀect since this task only requires an activation ofa phonological representation to create phonological output. Again, an
inhibitory eﬀect of lexical homophony was observed in the naming
performance. Thus, Experiments 1 and 2 clearly demonstrated an inhibitory eﬀect of lexical homophony through both lexical decision andnaming tasks for real words. As depicted in Figure 1, a visually presented

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

431

word (i.e., visual input) generates an activation of an orthographic representation, which further activates its phonological representation. In
turn, the phonological representation rebounds to generate a series oforthographic representations of lexical homophones. As such, the consistent results of both Experiments 1 and 2 supported the proposed modelof rebounding activation.
The present experiments controlled for semantic aspects of target twokanji compound words as shown in Table 1, and especially for possible
major factors of polysemy and abstract–concreteness. However, thisstimulus control of semantic aspect does not eliminate the possibility ofactivations of semantic representations in the processing of two-kanji
compound words in Experiments 1 and 2. As previous studies in the
Chinese language suggested (e.g., Perfetti, Liu, & Tan, 2005; Perfetti &Tan, 1998, 1999; Tan, Spinks, Eden, Perfetti, & Siok, 2005), three interlinked constituents among orthography, phonology and semantics takeplace in Chinese word identiﬁcation. In addition, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Siok, Perfetti, Jin and Tan (2004) foundthat reading impairment in the Chinese language is related to two aspectsof orthography-to-syllable conversion and orthography-to-semantics
mapping. Although these studies were conducted in recognition of Chinese words, this ﬁnding is readily applicable to Japanese word processing.
The present study also assumes that semantic representations are initiatedby rebounding activation. As shown in Figure 1, a visual input of 硬 貨
activates both phonological and semantic representations. The phonological representation of /koRka/ rebounds back to activate multiple
orthographic representations sharing the same sound, which further
activates the semantic representations of ‘eﬀect,’ ‘valuable,’ ‘coin’ and soon. As with Chinese two-character compound words, the present study
also predicts rich activations of semantic representations in Japanese twokanji compound words sharing the same sound /koRka/. However, since
the present study focused on the phonological perspective of Japanesehomophonic words by controlling semantic characteristics of target
stimuli, semantic activation was not considered in the present study.
The present study demonstrated an inhibitory eﬀect similar to thatshown in previous studies by Wydell et al. (1993) and Sakuma et al.
(1998). Homophonic eﬀects, however, were expected to interfere with thetask performance when orthographic representations of multiple homophonic words were simultaneously activated via the original stimuli ofphonological activation. Since these studies used the semantic categorization task to produce intense activations between the orthographic andsemantic lexica, the inhibitory eﬀect can be seen to involve a complex
process, which renders it diﬃcult to clarify the actual mechanism through432

KATSUO TAMAOKA

which lexical homophony aﬀects word processing. The present study
utilized a much simpler but more informative approach of lexical decisionand naming to determine the extent and nature of homophonic eﬀects.
The major contribution of the present study is the clear demonstration ofa rebounding activation phenomenon between orthography and phonology in the processing of homophonic words.
While focusing on the processing of Chinese two-character words,
Perfetti and Tan (1999) discovered that phonological activation was
involved in a meaning-judgment task in their ﬁrst experiment, and a lexicaldecision task with manipulation of phonological consistency in their second
experiment. The lexical decision task, which was also utilized in Experiment
1 of the present study, revealed that phonologically inconsistent words
required more time to make lexical decisions than consistent words.
Therefore, as these authors noted, phonology seems to be ‘an obligatory
constituent’ of word identiﬁcation in both Chinese and Japanese.
In contrast to the processing of real words, a closer inspection of theprocessing of nonwords in the lexical decision task in Experiment 1 andthe naming task in Experiment 2 indicated no inhibitory eﬀect of lexical
homophony. Nonwords with a single lexical homophony were rejected or
named as quickly and accurately as nonwords with a high degree oflexical homophony. Likely explanations for this result may be as follows.
For the lexical decision task, the combining of two kanji did not result inany real word so that participants simply made a ‘No’ lexical decision.
Likewise, for the naming task, participants simply sounded nonwords bychoosing the most common pronunciations of each of two kanji without
much reference to lexical unit. As indicated by 26.55% overall error rates,
naming for nonwords was quite diﬃcult since each kanji has multiple
pronunciations which cannot be identiﬁed without making such reference.
As such, it is quite possible that lexical orthographic representations
might be accessed as a whole word, and not a separate kanji morpheme.
Error rates seem to display a discrepancy between lexical decision andnaming even though stimulus words were identical for both tasks. Error rates
for real words with no lexical homophony were similar at 6.4% for lexicaldecision and 5.1% for naming to those for real words with a higher degree oflexical homophony, at 10.1% for lexical decision and 6.0% of naming. Since
participants have to perform using activation of orthographic representations
for lexical decision, multiple activations of orthographic representations
caused by rebounding activation of homophonic words interfered with theperformance of lexical decision. On the contrary, as naming only required theuse of phonology for actual output, the homophonic interference on naming
was not as strong as it was on lexical decision.

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

433

While Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study appear to oﬀer clear
evidence to support the concept of rebounding activation, there are three
additional—yet not unrelated—explanations for the inhibitory eﬀects ofhomophones. The ﬁrst explanation is fan eﬀects. Since multiple activationsof orthographic representations regarding lexical homophony took place
simultaneously, a total activation also extends to multiple homophonicitems, becoming diﬀuse in the process. As a result, each lexical item
including the target word cannot receive a strong activation, prolonging
the task performance. However, even allowing for fan eﬀects, orthographic representations of homophonic words should be activated, mostprobably via phonological activation of the visual input, which bounces
back to activate multiple orthographic representations of homophonicitems. Thus, the observation of fan eﬀects actually depends upon
rebounding activation.
The second possible explanation is strategy eﬀects of post lexical access.
As an explanation for homophonic words used by Rubenstein, Lewis and
Rubenstein (1971), activation of the pronunciation of the target word
‘weak’ [wi:k] further rebounded to activate a homophonic word ‘week.’
Thus, participants are required to have extra orthographic checking time,to avoid confusing ‘weak’ with ‘week.’ Again, this orthographic checking
strategy after lexical access would be necessary because multiple orthographic representations were activated by the rebounding activation oflexical homophony. While the present study cannot clearly identify when
homophonic eﬀects take place, this explanation of post lexical accessstrategy does not deny the occurrence of rebounding activation.
The third possible explanation is direct semantic activation. The phonological representation of a target word having a high degree of lexical
homophony further activates a series of semantic representations sharing
the same sound. In other words, a single sound like /koRka/ in Figure 1,
activates homophonic items with meanings such as ‘valuable,’ ‘eﬀect’ and‘solidiﬁcation,’ in addition to the meaning of the initially inputted word
‘coin.’ Multiple semantic activations slow down the task performance forwords with many homophones. This process is quite likely to occur,
especially when the semantic categorization task is used for experiments
such as those conducted by Wydell et al. (1993) and Sakuma et al. (1998).
For this reason, Figure 1 of the present study included the possibility ofsemantic activations in homophonic eﬀects. However, rather thanfocusing upon the involvement of semantic activations, the present study
used simple lexical decision and naming tasks to determine that
rebounding activation does in fact occur between orthography and phonology in the processing of homophonic words.

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KATSUO TAMAOKA

Acknowledgement
The present study is supported by the Research Institute of Science andTechnology for Society (RISTEX) at the Japan Science and Technology
Agency (JST), Kawaguchi, Japan. The principle recipient of this grant is
Dr. Hiroko Hagiwara at the Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan.
Appendix

Note: The naming task in Experiment 2 used real words in 1.1 and 1.2, and nonwords in
2.1 and 2.2. Nonsense-words with random kanjicombinations were excluded from
Experiment 2.

EFFECTS OF LEXICAL HOMOPHONY

435

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Address for correspondence: Katsuo Tamaoka, International Student Center, Hiroshima
University, 1-1, 1-chome, Kagamiyama, Higashihiroshima, 739-8523, Japan
Phone: +82-424-6288; Fax: +82-424-6288; E-Mail: ktamaoka@hiroshima-u.ac.jp