Phonological and graphic representations of words in mental lexicon: Homophone processing while reading

Abstract

This article presents an experimental study of the role of phonological representation of the word in lexical access during silent reading in Russian. The the phonological component in reading (i. e. whether semantics can be accessed via phonological decoding or directly from the orthographic image of the word) is actively discussed in modern psycholinguistics. Homophones can serve as a testing ground for these hypotheses: if graphemes are decoded into phonemes in silent reading in order to access semantics, then homophones will be processed like homonyms, but if semantics are accessed directly from the visual representation of the word, then homophones can be treated as all other orthographic neighbors. We address Russian homophones in order to investigate this question. In a self-paced reading experiment, we show that if a target word is substituted either by a homophone or a spelling control (an orthographic neighbor), semantic incongruence slows down the processing of the post-target region. We show that both homophones and spelling controls cause this processing load, and homophony does not facilitate the processing of semantically incongruent word. Our data give evidence for direct visual access to entries in mental lexicon as dual-route model predicts for experienced readers.