Reading aloud: Dissociating the semantic pathway from the non-semantic pathway of the lexical route

Abstract

According to dual-route models of reading, consistency effects in pseudoword reading are evidence for the activation of lexical information. We investigated whether this lexical interference has a semantic or a non-semantic origin. In Experiment 1, participants named aloud a set of words and pseudowords. The consistency effect in reading pseudowords co-occurred with associative priming effects in reading words but not with semantic priming effects. In Experiment 2, only words were presented. Comparable effects of both associative priming and semantic priming in naming words were found. This pattern provides evidence for the existence of a lexical non-semantic pathway in reading aloud. It also shows that this pathway is sensitive to associative relations among words. Finally, it calls into question the likelihood of a feedback mechanism from the semantic system to the orthographic input lexicon.