Base word Frequency and Pseudohomophone Naming

Abstract

The advantage of naming pseudohomophones over non-pseudohomophones has been interpreted as reflecting the contribution of whole-word lexical representations in phonological coding. A whole-word interpretation was further supported by Taft and Russell (1992), who reported a pseudohomophone frequency effect such that pseudohomophones were named faster if they corresponded to high- than to low-frequency base-words (e.g. poast vs. hoast). Experiment 1 replicated this pseudohomophone frequency effect using the Taft and Russell items. Further analyses showed, however, that the pseudohomophones in Taft and Russell's high-frequency group were more orthographically similar to words than the pseudohomophones in the low-frequency group. These differences in orthography may have been the cause of the “frequency” effects. In Experiment 2, a new set of high- and low-frequency pseudohomophones was constructed that were matched on orthographic factors (i.e. SPBF and N). With these items, a standard pseudohomophone advantage was found such that pseudohomophones were named faster and more accurately than non-pseudohomophones. However, in contrast to Taft and Russell's results, pseudohomophone naming was not related to base-word frequency. We conclude that the pseudohomophone advantage occurs at a postlexical stage in non-word naming.