Masked phonological priming effects in English - Center for Reading ...

134 K. Rastle, M. Brysbaert / Cognitive Psychology 53 (2006) 97–145A1.2Maximum Activation10.80.60.40.2WordsFoils01 9 17 25 33 41 49 57 65 73 81 89 97CycleB1.41.2Total Activation10.80.60.4WordsFoils0.201 9 17 25 33 41 49 57 65 73 81 89 97CycleFig. 3. Maximum phonological activation (A) and total phonological activation (B) for words and pseudohomophonefoils using the standard lexical decision parameters of the DRC model.can be made solely on the basis of phonological information; and doing so in the contextof a weak phonological architecture totally eliminates the need to propose an additionalspelling check.On the basis of these simulations, we submit that the recognition of printed words inlexical decision (and perhaps in other tasks too; e.g., perceptual identification) is basedlargely on the analysis of phonological representations, the activation of which is constrainedby orthographic information.8. ConclusionsThe research in this article began with two investigators sitting on opposite sides of thefence separating weak phonological and strong phonological theories of visual word recognition.One of us had argued on the basis of reading aloud data (e.g., Havelka & Rastle,2005; Rastle & Coltheart, 1999) that phonological assembly is a slow and serial process,but had not considered how such a process could be reconciled with masked phonologicalpriming effects (the empirical basis of which she questioned; Coltheart et al., 2001). Theother of us had argued on the basis of masked phonological priming data (e.g., Brysbaert,2001; Drieghe & Brysbaert, 2002) that phonological assembly is a rapid and automatic