Words written in Kana are named faster than the same words written in Kanji.

Number 306
Year 1980
Drawer 6
Entry Date 06/10/1999
Authors Feldman, L. B., & Turvey, M. T.
Contact
Publication Language and Speech, 23, 141-147.
url http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0306.pdf
Abstract Two adult Japanese named colors written in Kanji, a logographic orthography, and in Kana, a syllabary. Although colors are more frequently written in the Kanji form and although Kanji are more compact graphic representations of words in general, latency to vocalization was consistently less for the Kana. This superiority is attributed to the closer relation of Kana to phonology and, therefore, to speech. The demonstrated grater facility for naming Kana accords with observations in the literature that very familiar visual configurations are consistently named faster when they conform to a phonographic principle than when they do not.
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