Effect of Picture Prime on the Response Time and Error Rate Among Bilingual Children

Abstract

The Priming phenomena establishes a positive result in response to various word or picture naming tasks due to preceding manifestation in the form of a word or picture. The response time in identifying the words is less in the context of words appearing after a semantically connected word or picture compared to the words in segregation or words anteceded by a semantically unconnected word or picture. In order to investigate this phenomenon in the context of Bengali-speaking children, fifteen primary school children with ages ranging between 7 to 10 years were involved in the picture priming experiment. The experiment comprised of 25 words to be read by the children under two conditions consisting of without prime and with picture prime. Error rates of the participants are measured based on their performance during the experiment. The reaction time of the participants is also computed in seconds with reference to the two conditions that is the availability of prime and no prime. Analysis of the student's performance during the above experiment showed that the response time and error rate are comparatively reduced while identifying the target word in the condition of the presence of picture prime. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever investigation regarding the effect of the presence of picture prime among Bengali-speaking children.