Rebounding activation caused by lexical homophony in the processing of Japanese two-kanji compound words

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.