Abstract
Inconsistency in the spelling-to-sound mapping hurts visual word perception and reading aloud (i.e., the traditional consistency effect). In the present experiment, we found a consistency effect in auditory word perception: Words with phonological rimes that could be spelled in multiple ways produced longer auditory lexical decision latencies and more errors than did words with rimes that could be spelled only one way. This finding adds strong support to the claim that orthography affects the perception of spoken words. This effect was predicted by a model that assumes a coupling between orthography and phonology that is functional in both visual and auditory word perception.
Article PDF
References
Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simple reading tasks. In G. Underwood (Ed.),Strategies of information processing (pp. 151–216). London: Academic Press.
Coltheart, M., Curtis, B., Atkins, P., &Haller, M. (1993). Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches.Psychological Review,100, 589–608.
Coltheart, M., Davelaar, E., Jonasson, J. T., &Besner, D. (1977). Access to the internal lexicon. In S. Dornic (Ed.),Attention and performance VI (pp. 535–555). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Content, A., Mousty, P., &Radeau, M. (1990). BRULEX: Une base de données lexicales informatisée pour le Français écrit et parlé.Année Psychologique,90, 551–566.
Dijkstra, T., Roelofs, A., &Fieuws, S. (1995). Orthographic effects on phoneme monitoring.Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology,49, 264–271.
Donnenwerth-Nolan, S., Tanenhaus, M. K., &Seidenberg, M. S. (1981). Multiple code activation in word recognition: Evidence from rhyme monitoring.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory,7, 170–180.
Ehri, L. C. (1984). How orthography alters spoken language competencies in children learning to read and spell. In J. Downing & R. Valtin (Eds.),Language awareness and learning to read (pp. 119–147). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Ferrand, L., &Grainger, J. (1992). Phonology and orthography in visual word recognition: Evidence from masked nonword priming.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,42A, 353–372.
Ferrand, L., &Grainger, J. (1993). The time course of orthographic and phonological code activation in the early phases of visual word recognition.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,31, 119–122.
Ferrand, L., &Grainger, J. (1996). List context effects on masked phonological priming in the lexical decision task.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,3, 515–519.
Frauenfelder, U. H., Segui, J., &Dijkstra, T. (1990). Lexical effects in phonemic processing: Facilitatory or inhibitory?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,16, 77–91.
Frost, R., &Katz, L. (1989). Orthographic depth and the interaction of visual and auditory processing in word recognition.Memory & Language,17, 302–310.
Frost, R., Repp, B. H., &Katz, L. (1988). Can speech perception be influenced by simultaneous presentation of print?Journal of Memory & Language,27, 741–755.
Frost, S. J.,Fowler, C. A., &Rueckl, J. G. (1998).Bidirectional consistency: Effects of phonology common to speech and reading. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1984). Resolving 20 years of inconsistent interactions between lexical familiarity and orthography, concreteness, and polysemy.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,113, 256–281.
Glushko, R. J. (1979). The organization and activation of orthographic knowledge in reading aloud.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,5, 674–691.
Goldinger, S. D. (1996). Auditory lexical decision.Language & Cognitive Processes,11, 559–567.
Grainger, J., &Ferrand, L. (1994). Phonology and orthography in visual word recognition: Effects of masked homophone primes.Journal of Memory & Language,33, 218–233.
Grainger, J., &Ferrand, L. (1996). Masked orthographic and phonological priming in visual word recognition and naming: Cross-task comparisons.Journal of Memory & Language,35, 623–647.
Grainger, J., &Jacobs, A. M. (1996). Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: A multiple read-out model.Psychological Review,103, 518–565.
Jacobs, A. M., Rey, A., Ziegler, J. C., &Grainger, J. (1998). MROM-P: An interactive activation, multiple read-out model of orthographic and phonological processes in visual word recognition. In J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs (Eds.)Localist connectionist approaches to human cognition (pp. 147–188). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jakimik, J., Cole, R. A., &Rudnicky, A. I. (1985). Sound and spelling in spoken word recognition.Journal of Memory & Language,24, 165–178.
Jared, D., McRae, K., &Seidenberg, M. S. (1990). The basis of consistency effects in word naming.Journal of Memory & Language,29, 687–715.
Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1987). Functional parallelism in spoken word recognition.Cognition,25, 71–102.
McClelland, J. L., &Elman, J. L. (1986). The TRACE model of speech perception.Cognitive Psychology,18, 1–86.
Norris, D. (1994). SHORTLIST: A connectionist model of continuous speech recognition.Cognition,52, 189–234.
Peereman, R., Content, A., &Bonin, P. (1998). Is perception a twoway street? The case of feedback consistency in visual word recognition.Journal of Memory and Language,39, 151–174.
Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., &Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains.Psychological Review,103, 56–115.
Seidenberg, M. S., &McClelland, J. L. (1989). A distributed developmental model of word recognition and naming.Psychological Review,96, 523–568.
Seidenberg, M. S., &Tanenhaus, M. K. (1979). Orthographic effects on rhyme monitoring.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory,5, 546–554.
Seidenberg, M. S., Waters, G. S., Barnes, M. A., &Tanenhaus, M. K. (1984). When does irregular spelling or pronunciation influence word recognition?Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,23, 383–404.
Stone, G. O., Vanhoy, M. D., &Van Orden, G. C. (1997). Perception is a two-way street: Feedforward and feedback phonology in visual word recognition.Journal of Memory & Language,36, 337–359.
Stone, G. O., &Van Orden, G. C. (1994). Building a resonance framework for word recognition using design and system principles.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,20, 1248–1268.
Treiman, R., &Cassar, M. (1997). Can children and adults focus on sound as opposed to spelling in a phoneme counting task?Developmental Psychology,33, 771–780.
Van Orden, G. C., &Goldinger, S. D. (1994). Interdependence of form and function in cognitive systems explains perception of printed words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,20, 1269–1291.
Van Orden, G. C., Jansen op de Haar, M. A., &Bosman, A. M. T. (1997). Complex dynamic systems also predict dissociations, but they do not reduce to autonomous components.Cognitive Neuropsychology,14, 131–165.
Van Orden, G. C., Pennington, B. F., &Stone, G. O. (1990). Word identification in reading and the promise of subsymbolic psycholinguistics.Psychological Review,97, 488–522.
Zecker, S. G. (1991). The orthographic code: Developmental trends in reading-disabled and normally-achieving children.Annals of Dyslexia,41, 178–192.
Ziegler, J. C., &Jacobs, A. M. (1995). Phonological information provides early sources of constraint in the processing of letter strings.Journal of Memory & Language,34, 567–593.
Ziegler, J. C., Jacobs, A. M., &Stone, G. O. (1996). Statistical analysis of the bidirectional inconsistency of spelling and sound in French.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers,28, 504–515.
Ziegler, J. C., Montant, M., &Jacobs, A. M. (1997). The feedback consistency effect in lexical decision and naming.Journal of Memory & Language,37, 533–554.
Ziegler, J. C., Stone, G. O., &Jacobs, A. M. (1997). What’s the pronunciation for -ough and the spelling for /u /? A database for computing feedforward and feedback consistency in English.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers,29, 600–618.
Ziegler, J. C., Van Orden, G. C., &Jacobs, A. M. (1997). Phonology can help or hurt the perception of print.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,23, 845–860.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by grants from the Fondation Fyssen and the Australian Research Council. We are grateful to Madeleine Leveillé, Denis Lancelin, and Fanny Meunier for their help in setting up the experiment. Thanks are extended to Max Coltheart, Ram Frost, Randi Martin, Kathy Rastle, Mich Sommers, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ziegler, J.C., Ferrand, L. Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 5, 683–689 (1998). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208845
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208845