Interaction of lexical and sublexical information in spelling: Evidence from nonword priming

Abstract

In a series of lexical priming experiments we examined the interaction between spelling processes dedicated to spelling familiar words (lexical processes) and those dedicated to spelling unfamiliar words or nonwords (sublexical processes). Participants listened to lists of intermixed monosyllabic words and nonwords and were required to spell only the nonwords. In the priming condition, nonwords were preceded by real word primes that were phonologically related to the nonwords. In two experiments, we found that the spellings of nonwords could be influenced by previously heard rhyming words, replicating previous work. Furthermore, we examined the mechanism of this lexical/sublexical interaction and found that it is both phonologically and orthographically based and that word primes are most effective when they overlap in word body (vowel+coda) with the nonword. We conclude that lexical and sublexical processes interact in a manner that involves a dynamic updating of sound–spelling correspondences, which, at a minimum, are specified in terms of the word body.

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