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When bluebeards fly: A role for "assembled" phonological representations in the activation of meaning
Abstract
The present studies addressed the issue of whether the phonological mediation of visual word recognition proceeds through an assembled or an addressed representation. In Experiment 1, subjects judged whether pairs of words were semantically related. Both homophone and "false homophone" stimuli were used. The set of "false homophones" consisted of words with the following characteristics: (1) They have neighbors that share its orthographic body but not its pronunciation (B$\underline{\rm EARD}$ - H$\underline{\rm EARD}$ and (2) when an alternate pronunciation of the body is attached to the pronunciation of the onset, another word is produced (e.g., if BEARD were pronounced like HEARD, then the word "bird" would result). Experiment 1 demonstrated that reaction times in a semantic relatedness judgment task were longer to homophones (e.g., SAND - BEECH) and "false homophones" (e.g., ROBIN - BEARD) of a semantic associate than to visually similar controls. Subjects also made more errors to homophone pairs than to visually similar controls. Since the false homophone pairs were related through a phonological representation not specified in the word's lexical entry, it was concluded that the phonological representation responsible for the effect was an assembled representation. In a second experiment, a parafoveal preview paradigm was used in order to determine whether the phonological representation integrated across fixations in reading is an assembled or an addressed representation. As in Experiment 1, subjects made semantic relatedness decisions to the stimulus pairs. In the most interesting condition, it was expected that a "biasing" preview (one that specified the spelling-to-sound correspondence that, when applied to the false homophone, would produce the phonological representation of a word related to the other member of the to-be-judged pair) would increase reaction times to the false homophone targets. The failure to observe the expected "biasing" effect is discussed in terms of the characteristics of a neighborhood based on the onset and following vowel cluster of the preview. While the expected preview effect was not observed, the effect of the target words essentially replicated those of Experiment 1. These results argue that phonological mediation proceeds through an assembled phonological representation.
Subject Area
Experimental psychology|Psychology
Recommended Citation
Lesch, Mary Frances, "When bluebeards fly: A role for "assembled" phonological representations in the activation of meaning" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9408301.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9408301