Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 19, Issue 1, 1985, Pages 1-30
Cognition

The time course of phonological code activation in two writing systems

https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90029-0Get rights and content

Abstract

Models of visual word recognition differ in assumptions about the extent to which phonological information is used, and the processes by which it becomes available. These issues were examined in two studies of word recognition in two writing systems, English and Chinese, which are structured along different principles (alphabetic and logographic, respectively). The results indicate that in each writing system, a large pool of higher frequency words is recognized on a visual basis, without phonological mediation. Phonology only enters into the processing of lower frequency words. Thus, although there may be other differences among writing systems which influence processing, differences in the manner in which they represent phonology are not relevant to the recognition of common words. The results are consistent with a parallel interactive model of word recognition in which orthographic and phonological information are activated at different latencies.

Résumé

Les modéles de reconnaissance visuelle de mots différent selon les hypothéses sur l'utilisation de l'information phonologique et les processus qui la rendent accessible. L'anglais et le chinois ont des systémes structurés l'un selon l'alphabet, l'autre, la logographie. Deux études ont utilisé ces caractéristiques les résultats montrant qu'avec chacun des systémes d'écriture les mots trés fréquents sont reconnus sur une base visuelle sans médiation phonologique. La phonologie ne joue que pour le traitement de mots peu fréquents. Ainsi, bien que d'autres différences dans les systémes d'écriture peuvent influencer sur le traitement, les différences dans la maniére dont ces écritures représentent la phonologie ne sont pas pertinents pour la reconnaissance des mots usuels. Ces résultats sont compatibles avec un mode de reconnaissance des mots interactif et en paralléle dans lequel l'information orthographique et phonologique est activée á des latences différentes.

References (71)

  • W.P. Banks et al.

    Recoding of printed words to internal speech: Does recording come before lexical access?

  • J. Baron et al.

    Use of orthographic and word-specific knowledge in reading words aloud

    J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percep. Perf.

    (1976)
  • D. Bauer et al.

    Lexical access and the spelling-to-sound regularity effect

    Mem. Cog.

    (1980)
  • D. Bradley et al.

    Syntactic deficits in Broca's aphasia

  • J.B. Carroll et al.

    The American Heritage World Frequency Book

    (1971)
  • N. Chomsky

    Conditions of transformations

  • N. Chomsky et al.

    The Sound Pattern of English

    (1968)
  • M. Coltheart

    Lexical access in simple reading tasks

  • M. Coltheart

    Reading, phonological recoding, and deep dyslexia

  • M. Coltheart

    Disorders of reading and their implications for models of normal reading

    Visible Lang.

    (1981)
  • M. Coltheart et al.

    Phonological encoding in the lexical decision task

    Q. J. exp. Psychol.

    (1979)
  • I. Dennis et al.

    Is phonological recoding under strategic control?

    Mem. Cog.

    (1981)
  • L. Feldman

    Visual word recognition in Serbo-Croatian is necessarily phonological

    Haskins Laboratories Status Report on Speech Recognition

    (1981)
  • K.I. Forster

    Accessing the internal lexicon

  • R.J. Glushko

    The organization and activation of orthographic knowledge in reading aloud

    J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percep. Perf.

    (1979)
  • J. Goody

    Literacy in Traditional Societies

    (1968)
  • P. Gough

    One second of reading

  • B.L. Hale et al.

    How sentence context affects word identification: A signal detection theory analysis

    Paper presented at the 24th Annual Psychonomics Society meeting, San Diego.

    (1983)
  • L. Henderson

    Orthography and Word Recognition in Reading

    (1982)
  • Henderson, L. (in press) Issues in the modelling of pronunciation assembly. In J.C. Marshall, M. Coltheart and K....
  • J. Hooper

    Word frequency in lexical diffusion and the source of morphological change

  • D.L. Hung et al.

    Orthographic variations and visual information processing

    Psychol. Bull.

    (1981)
  • J. Huttenlocher et al.

    The source of relatedness effects on naming latency

    J. exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cog.

    (1983)
  • A.F. Jorm et al.

    Phonological recoding and reading acquisition

    (1983)
  • B. Karlgren

    An Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese

    (1923)
  • Cited by (0)

    This research was supported by NSERC grant A7924 and a grant from the Quebec Ministry of Education (FCAC EQ-2074).

    I am especially grateful to Joan Lee, Evi Wong Ho, Wade Hong, Ovid Tzeng, and Daisy Hung for assistance in developing the Chinese stimuli, and to Joan Lee for running Experiment 1. William S.-Y. Wang's comments on an earlier draft were very helpful; I also thank Jay McClelland, John Marshall, Max Coltheart, Karalyn Patterson and Gloria Waters for discussions of various questions concerning models of word recognition.

    View full text