Concurrent vocal interference: Its effects on kana and kanji

An experiment is reported in which Japanese subjects were asked to judge whether pairs of words written in kana or kanji were or were not related in meaning. It was found that concurrent vocal interference impaired the reading of kana but did not affect the reading of kanji. This was taken as evidence that concurrent vocal interference disrupts prelexical phonological coding in kana. It is argued that this result furthers our understanding of the effects of concurrent vocal interference on reading tasks.