Introduction: A word is the smallest sequence of phonemes that can be uttered in isolation with objective or practical meaning in spoken language. Word recognition is the process of seeing a word and recognizing its pronunciation without having to think about it. One of the most important requirements for decoding in word identification is phonological awareness (Snow et al., 1998). Priming is one of the most significant concepts in word recognition. It entails presenting material to which a reaction must be given before the word is spoken. To test word recognition skills, phonological priming exercises are frequently used. Phonological priming investigates how words are prioritised in the mental lexicon over similar-sounding words based on their phonological form (Dufour & Peereman, 2003; Goldlinger et al., 1989).

Need For The Study: In the present scenario, there are not many studies available on the effect of priming words on cognitive linguistic abilities in the Malayalam language, especially in typically aging population. Hence this study will be beneficial in assessment and planning intervention programs for the management of individuals with language impairments secondary to cognitive issues

Aim: To compare the impact of aging on recognition of phonologically primed and phonologically nonprimed word pairs based on reaction time and task completion time.

Methods: A total of 150 healthy aging adults in the age range of 31-80 years participated in the current study. The participants were further divided into five subgroups with 30 participants in each age group i.e 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, and 71-80 years.

This section was aimed at developing 20 phonologically primed word pairs, 20 phonologically non primed word pairs to assess the recognition ability

Results and Discussion: The results revealed that activation of brain regions during the detection of phonologically primed and nonprimed words were differed. This can be justified by the fact that the second word of a phonologically primed word pair needs merely partial activation during word recognition as it is preceded by a phonemically similar word. As a result, the activation path for phonologically primed word pairs is shorter and requires less neural activity resulting in better reaction time and task completion time compared to phonological non primed word pairs. Due to the lack of contextual information and additional cognitive effort, phonologically nonprimed words have a slower reaction time and task completion time. Furthermore, phonologically nonprimed words go through a series of intricate interaction stages of brain activation. These results are in consonance with the findings of Frost et al., (2003), that priming is greater for phonological primes

Summary and Conclusion: It can be concluded that due to lack of contextual information and additional cognitive effort, phonologically nonprimed words have a slower response than phonologically primed words.

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Girija P C

Associate Professor & Head, Department of Audiology & Speech Language Pathology, AWH Special College, Calicut