Summary
A semantic categorization task was carried out on single words in order to determine under what circumstances a phonological code might be implicated in the process of getting from print to meaning. The subjects were asked whether or not a target word presented visually was a member of a superordinate category or “sounded like” a member of a category (e.g., “PAIR”; FRUIT). The target words were drawn from two groups, orthographically regular words (complying with grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English) and orthographically irregular words (exceptions to grapheme-phoneme correspondences).
The results indicated that a phonological code may only be a necessary requirement for word comprehension in a task demanding phonological assessment (i.e., in the case of PAIR in the “sounds like” task). Furthermore, it was argued that some phonological effects, arising in single word comprehension, may be attributed to prelexical phonology while others may implicate postlexical phonology.
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Pring, L. Phonological encoding and word comprehension. Psychol. Res 47, 211–216 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309448
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309448