Lexical and sublexical translation of spelling to sound: Strategic anticipation of lexical status.

Abstract

Two experiments on oral reading of single words compared naming performance in pure blocks of nonwords or exception words with performance in blocks of randomly mixed nonwords and exception words. Ss named exception words faster and made fewer regularization errors when they were not also prepared for nonwords. These data suggest Ss inhibit or ignore the computation of assembled phonology when only exception words are expected. Ss named nonwords faster, but no more accurately, when low-frequency exception words were not also anticipated. Thus, Ss' readiness to execute assembled phonology appears to be adjusted in relation to the likely time course of retrieval of learned pronunciations, when the latter must be attended to. This evidence for strategic dissociation between sublexical and lexical translation is discussed in relation to current models.

The inconsistency of consistency effects in reading: The case of Japanese Kanji.

“…If this character-by-character reading for the nonword stimuli were to induce a similar strategy for the words, then-because both word and character levels would yield only one possible pronunciation for the consistent words but could yield conflicting pronunciations for the inconsistent words-wnsistency effects in Kanji reading might emerge. The parallel to this predicted phenomenon in English has been demonstrated by Monsell, Patterson, Graham, Hughes, and Milroy (1992), who found a significantly higher error rate (particularly regularization errors) to exceptional inconsistent English words when nonwords were mixed in with the words.…”

“…It would of course be impossible to offer a single value for a lexicality effect in experiments with English readers, as the effect will clearly vary as a function of the characteristics of the words, the nonwords, the reading skill of the participants, and so forth. Several studies in the literature, however, in which English words and matched nonwords were named in mixed lists (as in the design of Experiment 4 for Kanji) suggest a typical R T difference in the region of 30-50 ms (see, for example, Glushko, 1979;Monsell et al, 1992 The idea that processing in Kanji relies primarily on a whole-word level finds some general support in a study by Morton, Sasanuma, Patterson, and Sakuma (1992), who investigated recognition units for Kanji words by using a different paradigm to the current naming experiments. In that study, target words to be identified tachistoscopicaliy were preceded, about half an hour earlier and in a different task, by words in one of several critical conditions: (a) an identity prime (the prime and target words were identical), (b) a single-character prime (the target was a two-character word, and the prime was one of its component characters), and (c) a two-character prime (in which the target was either a single-character word corresponding to one of the components of the prime or a different two-character word sharing a character with the prime).…”

“…In English word-naming experiments, the difference between regular and 'irregular' words often reveals itself in error rates as well as in RTs. The most common error to an irregular English word is the assignment of an alternative, more cornmon pronunciation of the inconsistent segment (typically the body or rime); and the likelihood of such regularization errors can be augmented by manipulations such as speeded naming instructions (Strain et al, 1995) or inclusion of nonwords in the stimulus set (Midgley-West, 1979; Monsell et al, 1992). In contrast, our experiments yielded almost no Kanji naming errors that would be the equivalent of assigning an alternative pronunciation to an inconsistent segment, that is, alternative ON-KUN reading errors.…”

Effects of syllable frequency in speech production

“…Several studies suggest that participants can adopt different time criteria when to respond contingent on task difficulty (Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997;Monsell, Patterson, Graham, Hughes, & Milroy, 1992;Taylor & Lupker, 2001). For example, Lupker et al (1997) found that participants can adjust their performance in relation to the preceding trial.…”

Are there interactive processes in speech perception?

“…The impact of lexical information on phoneme processing appears to be modulated by the degree of attention to lexical information ( [52][53][54] and similar effects have been found on speech production [55] and reading [56]). Norris et al [4] argued that to account for this attentional modulation, interactive models would have to turn off feedback, thereby making them autonomous.…”