EBONYI JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE
EJLLS Publication
EJLLS| Title: | Spoken and Visual Word Recognition Within the Igbo Linguistic Context: Effect of Age |
| Author(s): | Josephine Ngozi UBAH |
| Abstract: | Spoken and visual word recognition is a major aspect of speech perception which entails how spoken and visual (written) words can be recognized and processed by individuals through the ears and the brain. Although some researchers think that studies on this aspect may be a good strategy for eliminating confusing variables and thoughts, it is not clear how results of studies as these may be generalized. The focus of this study is to examine the effect of age on the use of Igbo linguistic context in spoken and visual word recognition. Decision Rule Competition (Cohort’s model) and Lexical Decision Task (Meyer and Schvaneveldt’s model) tests are used to elicit data from participants. Eight native speakers of Igbo participated in the exercise – four young individuals and four old individuals. A one-on-one involvement on participation is carried out to elicit information/data from the individuals. The findings of the studies showed that for spoken word recognition, most of the words were recognized easily within two seconds for the different age groups and the non-words were not perceived and recognized by all the participants. For visual word recognition, significant variance contributed a lot by individual differences in age of participant and cognitive function; hence, accuracy varied at different ages for different individuals. Also, it is proved that older individuals perform worse in response times at recognizing unfamiliar words than younger ones. It was concluded that the ability to use linguistic context to aid spoken and visual word recognition is adequately vigorous that a relatively wide range in age among native Igbo speakers has moderate effect on recognition performance. |
| Keywords: | Speech perception; spoken and visual word recognition; and age |
