"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2010."Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2010.Includes bibliographical references.Previous research has indicated normal English speaking controls were subject to proactive
interference (PI) with manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness of distance
between probes and list-items (Hamilton & Martin, 2007). We aimed at replicating results to
Cantonese participants using negative probe test and to investigate if variation in writing and
phonological system would inflict differential inhibitory processing. Relative to the English
precedent, healthy participants showed concurrent ability to inhibit irrelevant information
when probes are related to previous list. PI was significant on same list trials with
semantically-related conditions, but not when they are phonologically-related. Such
differential results provided important implications for language specificity where
phonological processing units are shorter in Cantonese with mix of consonant-vowel-tone
combinations than at individual phonemic level in English (Wong & Chen, 2009). Word
frequency, regularity and use of visual strategies may also enhance recognition latency based
on familiarity and level of activation during lexical processing.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science
