Phonological precision for word recognition in skilled readers

Abstract

According to the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007), differences in the orthographic, semantic, and phonological representations of words will affect individual reading performance. Whilst several studies have focused on orthographic precision and semantic coherence, few have considered phonological precision. The present study used a suite of individual difference measures to assess which components of lexical quality contributed to competition resolution in a masked priming experiment. The experiment measured form priming for word and pseudoword targets with dense and sparse neighbourhoods in 84 university students. Individual difference measures of language and cognitive skills were also collected and a principal component analysis was used to group these data into components. The data showed that phonological precision and NHD interacted with form priming. In participants with high phonological precision, the direction of priming for word targets with sparse neighbourhoods was facilitatory, while the direction for those with dense neighbourhoods was inhibitory. In contrast, people with low phonological precision showed the opposite pattern, but the interaction was non-significant. These results suggest that the component of phonological precision is linked to lexical competition for word recognition and that access to the mental lexicon during reading is affected by differing levels of phonological processing.

Orthographic precision for word naming in skilled readers

“…A larger facilitatory priming effect was observed for word targets from dense neighbourhoods than for those from sparse neighbourhoods, which is the reverse of what is found in visual LDT (e.g. Andrews & Hersch, 2010;Davis & Lupker, 2006;Elsherif et al, 2022). They argued that the facilitation was due to shared words onsets aiding the preparation of the spoken response (with more onset overlap in dense neighbourhoods).…”

“…Andrews & Hersch, 2010;Andrews & Lo, 2012;Meade et al, 2018) or phonological (e.g. Elsherif et al, 2022) precision contribute to the development of skilled reading.…”

“…The current study used the same materials as Elsherif et al (2022) to investigate visual word naming. Elsherif et al (2022) report a masked form-priming study of LDT in which we manipulated prime-target lexicality and NHD.…”

“…The current study used the same materials as Elsherif et al (2022) to investigate visual word naming. Elsherif et al (2022) report a masked form-priming study of LDT in which we manipulated prime-target lexicality and NHD. As the focus of this study was on lexical competition, word primes were higher in frequency than words targets to maximise the primes' ability to suppress neighbours.…”

“…Davis & Lupker, 2006), form-priming of word targets was inhibitory when the primes were also words but facilitatory when the primes were pseudowords. Elsherif et al (2022) also included a large suite of individual differences to examine their contribution to competition resolution in LDT. We found that the inhibitory form-priming was modulated by a component relating to phonological precision.…”