PSYC3311 Lecture 9: Week 5 lec 1
Week 5 lec 1
Phonological recording – how we get from print to sound
Another issue – print to meaning. how do u do this
Cat (word) --> orthography --> meaning
But u can go through phonological to get to meaning
Semantics = meaning
Another pathway is OP --> S
Is there phonological mediation
This is confused w dual route pathway
Phonological mediation
However one gets from print to sound, there is the further important issue of whether it is
possible to go directly from the orthographic system to meaning, or is there mediation via
phonology? That is, is an O-P-S route more important than an O-S route?
OPS route is phonological mediation
Van Orden (1987) supports the importance of O-P-S (i.e., phonological mediation in
silent reading). Harder to say that ROWS is not a "flower" than to say RODS is not a
"flower". Suggests that P is activated in getting to S.
- used semantic task – category judgment
- participants given name of semantic category eg flowers. and then asked is this a flower
eg is rows a flower
Rods < rows
Rows is homophone of a flower (rose)
We know phonology is important when learning to read but van orden said even older
adults use it
Mb phonology is only activated when direct o-s pathway fails
But maybe this is only when O-S does not give a positive answer. That is, maybe O-P-S
is used as a back-up for O-S, and hence is less important (see Taft & van Graan, 1998 -
see "Useful Links" in Moodle).
- evidence against phonological pathway This study addresses the question of whether it
is possible to read a word for meaning without phonological mediation. The task was
semantic categorization. Participants decided whether or not each target word belonged to
the category ‘‘words with definable meanings’’(e.g., PLANK, PINT) or the category
‘‘given names’’ (e.g., TRENT, PAM). To test phonological mediation, latencies to
respond to regular definable words (e.g., PLANK) and irregular definable words (e.g.
PINT) were compared. No regularity effect was observed, despite these same words
showing a difference in a naming task. Thus the semantic task was shown to be
insensitive to a phonological effect
In fact, maybe P-S is not even used during silent reading. Taft (1982) showed that the
orthographic similarity between a pseudohomophone and its baseword has an impact on
Pseudohomophone Judgement responses: e.g., SCAIR < SKAIR and SKAIT < SCAIT.
- deciding whether nonword is pronounced identically to a word
- scair is faster than skair. why? cos scair is orthographically more similar to the baseword
(scare) --> this is the target word. the word its homophonic with.
If P is available in silent reading, then O-P should be used for Pseudohomophone
Judgement with the orthography of the baseword being irrelevant. The fact that the
orthography of the baseword is actually relevant implies that phonological word
units are not involved in the task.
