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Orthographic characteristics speed Hindi word naming but slow Urdu naming: evidence from Hindi/Urdu biliterates

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Abstract

Two primed naming experiments tested the orthographic depth hypothesis in skilled biliterate readers of Hindi and Urdu. These languages are very similar on the spoken level but differ greatly in script; Hindi is a highly transparent script, whereas Urdu is more opaque. It was accordingly hypothesized that form-based priming would be greater for Hindi than Urdu, reflecting greater reliance on a phonological assembly route in the more transparent Hindi script. Proficient Hindi/Urdu biliterate readers were presented with primes either in Hindi or Urdu script (Exp. 1), or in Roman transcription (Exp. 2), while targets were always in blocks of Hindi or Urdu. Across both experiments, form-based priming was observed only in Hindi. Additionally, target words were named significantly faster and better in Hindi than in Urdu. The results are taken as support for the hypothesis of differential reliance on phonological assembly as a function of script transparency. Further, the greater graphemic complexity of Urdu script relative to Hindi appears to have contributed to slower and less accurate overall single word reading for Urdu than Hindi, despite the fact that Urdu was the first learned script.

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Notes

  1. Spellings of Urdu words, where provided, should be read from right to left, in keeping with the directionality of Urdu script. Thus, in the Hindi/Urdu word /paun/, the Urdu letter peysh represents /p/, waau stands for /au/, and nuun is /n/.

  2. Most Hindi/Urdu biliterates tested in both experiments in the present study were multilingual and multiliterate, with knowledge of a diverse array of Indic and non-Indic languages, including Arabic, Bengali, English and Persian.

  3. Anticipating that the nature of prime-target overlap might make it difficult for readers to distinguish them as distinct events, we introduced a brief Inter Stimulus Interval (ISI), following the demonstration by Ferrand (1996) that the introduction of an ISI successfully eliminated repetition priming effects.

  4. Prime exposure was varied at short (136 ms) and long (680 ms) SOA in both experiments, but preliminary analyses revealed only a main effect of SOA on participants’ naming latencies, with faster responses at the long SOA, and no interactions with other factors. Therefore, SOA was dropped from subsequent analyses.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Texas A&M University Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research graduate stipendiary fellowship to the first author and by a Scholarly and Creative Activities Grant awarded to the second author by Texas A&M University. Portions of this research were previously presented at the 2008 meeting of the Psychonomics Society, Chicago.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, Haryana, 122 050, India

    Chaitra Rao

  2. Psychology Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-4235, USA

    Jyotsna Vaid

  3. Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, Allahabad University, Allahabad, India

    Narayanan Srinivasan

  4. National Chung Cheng University, Minhsiung, Taiwan

    Hsin-Chin Chen

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  1. Chaitra Rao
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  2. Jyotsna Vaid
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  4. Hsin-Chin Chen
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Correspondence to Chaitra Rao.

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Rao, C., Vaid, J., Srinivasan, N. et al. Orthographic characteristics speed Hindi word naming but slow Urdu naming: evidence from Hindi/Urdu biliterates. Read Writ 24, 679–695 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9256-9

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