ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

4pSP3. On the interaction of phonology and orthography in spoken word recognition.

Dept. of Psychol., SUNY at Albany, Albany, NY 12222

The interaction of phonology and orthography in spoken word recognition was examined in experiments using lexical decision and shadowing tasks. The first syllable of primes and targets shared phonology (FERTILE-FURNISH), orthography (BUGLE-BUGGY), both (PICKLE-PICTURE) or neither (PENGUIN-FELLOW). In addition, the first syllable of the target could constitute a word (RATIFY) or a nonword (DERANGE). A standard lexicality effect was obtained in lexical decision (i.e., words were responded to faster than nonwords). Also, a first syllable lexicality effect was obtained in lexical decision and shadowing, replicating earlier work [E. A. Lyons and P. A. Luce, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93, 2372 (1993)]. For word targets, orthography facilitated response times relative to phonology and both phonology and orthography in shadowing and lexical decision. For nonword targets and nonword first syllables, phonology facilitated response times relative to orthography and both phonology and orthography. These results contrast with those obtained by Jakimik et al. [J. Mem. and Lang. 24, 165--178 (1985)] in which facilitation was obtained only for both phonology and orthography. The current results suggest that words and nonwords are differentially influenced by phonological and orthographic cues. [Work supported by NIH grant NS-29286-03.]