Evidence for a late-occurring effect of phoneme repetition during silent reading

Two reading experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of phoneme repetition during silent reading (also referred to as the visual tongue-twister effect, see McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982; Perfetti & McCutchen, 1982) in conjunction with end-of-clause and end-of-sentence wrap-up effects (Just & Carpenter, 1982; Rayner, Sereno, Morris, Schmauder, & Clifton, 1989). In both experiments, reading time was measured on sentences containing either six or zero words sharing the same initial phoneme. Sentences were presented in a phrase-by-phrase moving window, with each phrase either containing one word that involved a repeated phoneme or a matched word not involving a repeated phoneme. The sixth presentation region either contained or did not contain a comma (Experiment 1) or a period (Experiment 2). The results showed that the effect of phoneme repetition occurred relatively late during sentence processing, only after integration processing related to end-of-clause and end-of-sentence wrap-up occurred.