Yoolim at MPI

While at the MPI, I was a member of the Psychology of Language Department.

I also worked within the Cultural Brain Group with whom I am currently collaborating on a research project exploring statistical learning.

I am thankful to Professor Antje Meyer and Professor Falk Huettig as well as all members of PoL (and beyond!) who made this visit not only possible, but also worthwhile and enjoyable.

I would also like to thank Dr Rebecca Frost who kindly took the above photograph of me standing in the grounds of the MPI.

The main goal of my fieldwork in Korea was to investigate whether Chinese Hanja characters were represented in the Korean mental lexicon, and if so, how?

During March-April 2018, I conducted a series of behavioural studies at three universities in and around Seoul in Korea; namely Kyunghee University, Hansung University and Sookmyung Women's University.

I was interested to see whether speakers showed any semantic sensitivity to Hanja characters, offering insight into how they may represented in relation to Korean.

This research is inspired by King Sejong, who promulgated the creation of a native Korean alphabet Hangul (which can be seen in the photo above) after prolonged use of Hanja characters to write Korean. Although today Hangul is our celebrated alphabet, more than half of the lexicon is of Sino-Korean origin. How might this bear effect on our processing?