Lexical effects in naming pseudowords in shallow orthographies: Further empirical data.

Abstract

Pseudoword reading in Italian, a language with a regular but context-sensitive mapping from orthography to phonology, was investigated. Pairs of pseudowords were derived from words by changing the vowel following a target letter. In 1 of the pseudowords, pronunciation of the target grapheme was the same as in the original word (consistent), whereas in the other it was different (inconsistent). In Experiment 1, pseudowords were mixed with words. In the other 2 experiments, only pseudowords were presented. Consistency effects in naming the pseudowords emerged in Experiment 1 but disappeared in Experiments 2 and 3. The pattern of results constrains the functional architecture of reading models because the list composition effect is compatible with a dual-route model but is difficult to reconcile with a single-route framework.