The effect of the number of possible words on word completion: a magnetoencephalographic study

We examined the effect of the number of possible words in a word completion task on left superior temporal activity using magnetoencephalography. If this area is involved in access to phonological word representations, as assumed in dual-route models of reading, its activation for word fragments having many possible words (Many condition) would be greater than for fragments with one possible word (Single condition). Left superior temporal activity did not differ in strength between the conditions, while behavioral data suggested multiple accesses in the Many condition. Activation was shorter in the Many than in the Single condition, probably owing to bigram frequency difference. These results are inconsistent with the view that the left superior temporal area is related to lexical-route processing.