Reading without Phonology?

Abstract

Responses to items such as brane are slower and/or more error prone than responses to items such as slint in lexical decision (is this string spelt like a real word?). The received view is that this “pseudohomophone” effect is attributable to phonological receding. Taft (1982) has challenged this view, offering instead a grapheme-grapheme account which assumes that graphemes that map onto a common phoneme develop the ability to activate each other without reference to phonological mediation. Taft's grapheme-grapheme account is tested in two experiments. Experiment 1 shows that the presentation of a pseudohomophone facilitates the response to a subsequently presented word (e.g., groce–gross). Experiment 2 shows that nonword letter strings that are translatable into words by the application of putative grapheme-grapheme rules (e.g., gloce–gloss) produce no facilitation. These results are consistent with the notion of a phonological influence but inconsistent with the grapheme–grapheme account. Loci for this pseudohomophone priming effect are discussed.