The locus of serial processing in reading aloud: Orthography-to-phonology computation or speech planning?

Petroula Mousikou, Kathy Rastle, Derek Besner, Max Coltheart

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Abstract

Dual-route theories of reading posit that a sublexical reading mechanism that operates serially and from left to right is involved in the orthography-to-phonology computation. These theories attribute the masked onset priming effect (MOPE) and the phonological Stroop effect (PSE) to the serial left-to-right operation of this mechanism. However, both effects may arise during speech planning, in the phonological encoding process, which also occurs serially and from left to right. In the present paper, we sought to determine the locus of serial processing in reading aloud by testing the contrasting predictions that the dual-route and speech planning accounts make in relation to the MOPE and the PSE. The results from three experiments that used the MOPE and the PSE paradigms in English are inconsistent with the idea that these effects arise during speech planning, and consistent with the claim that a sublexical serially operating reading mechanism is involved in the print-to-sound translation. Simulations of the empirical data on the MOPE with the dual route cascaded (DRC) and connectionist dual process (CDP) models, which are computational implementations of the dual-route theory of reading, provide further support for the dual-route account.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1076-1099
Number of pages24
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Volume41
Issue number4
Early online date22 Dec 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2015

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