Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a prelexical phonological level?

Full Abstract

Nonwords created by transposing two letters (e.g., RELOVUTION) are very effective at activating the lexical representation of their base words (Perea & Lupker, 2004). In the present study, we examined whether the nature of transposed-letter (TL) similarity effects was purely orthographic or whether it could also have a phonological component. Specifically, we examined transposed-letter similarity effects for nonwords created by transposing two nonadjacent letters (e.g., relovución-REVOLUCION) in a masked form priming experiment using the lexical decision task (Experiment 1). The controls were (a) a pseudohomophone of the transposed-letter prime (relobución-REVOLUCION; note that B and V are pronounced as /b/ in Spanish) or (b) an orthographic control (relodución-REVOLUCION). Results showed a similar advantage of the TL nonword condition over the phonological and the orthographic control conditions. Experiment 2 showed a masked phonological priming effect when the letter positions in the prime were in the right order. In a third experiment, using a single-presentation lexical decision task, TL nonwords produced longer latencies than the orthographic and phonological controls, whereas there was only a small phonological effect restricted to the error data. These results suggest that TL similarity effects are orthographic--rather than phonological--in nature.

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Author information

Author/s: Perea, Manuel (M); Carreiras, Manuel (M);

Affiliation: Universitat de València, València, Spain. mperea(-atsign-)uv.es

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) (Q J Exp Psychol (Colchester)), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Sep; vol 59 (issue 9) : pp 1600-13

Dates: Created 2006/07/28; Completed 2006/11/03; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 16873111, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Association
Cues
Decision Making - physiology
Humans
Language
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology

Perceptual Masking - physiology
Phonetics
Reaction Time - physiology
Reading
Students - psychology
Vocabulary

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