The development of the orthographic consistency effect in speech recognition: from sublexical to lexical involvement

The influence of orthography on children's on-line auditory word recognition was studied from the end of Grade 2 to the end of Grade 4, by examining the orthographic consistency effect [Ziegler, J. C., & Ferrand, L. (1998). Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin &Review, 5, 683-689.] in auditory lexical decision and shadowing tasks. Words with rhymes that can be spelled in two different ways (inconsistent) produced longer auditory lexical decision and shadowing times and more errors than did consistent words. A similar consistency effect was also observed on pseudowords. The observation of a general consistency effect, both for words and pseudowords, in lexical decision and in shadowing suggests a widespread influence of orthography in the children's spoken word recognition system. On exactly the same material, with adult listeners we replicated the usual pattern of an orthographic consistency effect restricted to words in lexical decision [Ventura, P., Morais, J., Pattamadilok, C., & Kolinsky, R. (2004). The locus of the orthographic consistency effect in auditory word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 57-95; Ziegler, J. C., & Ferrand, L. (1998). Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin &Review, 5, 683-689]. A reanalysis of the lexical decision and shadowing results of Ventura et al. [Ventura, P., Morais, J., Pattamadilok, C., & Kolinsky, R. (2004). The locus of the orthographic consistency effect in auditory word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 57-95.] confirmed the discrepancy between the effects of orthographic consistency in child readers and adults. A further control experiment showed that orthographic consistency effects were not present in pre-readers. Results are interpreted considering the coexistence in children's reading of a mechanism of automatic access to well-specified orthographic representations of words and the persistence of grapho-phonological decoding procedures.