Phonological assembly in reading: lexical contribution leads to violation of graphophonological rules

According to current models of reading, the phonological representation of a letter string could be generated by means of two different procedures. The first consists in the looking up or addressing of the phonological representation of the appropriate word in the mental lexicon. The second consists in the assignment of a phonological code to the various orthographic units that occur in the letter string and the assembly of them into a unitary phonological representation. However, the various models of phonological assembly differ in the nature of the knowledge that such assembly requires. On the one hand, dual-route theories assert that the assembly process operates by means of extralexical graphophonological rules and, therefore, without reference to lexical knowledge. On the other hand, in analogy theories and interactive models of phonological assembly, the lexical phonological representations of words orthographically close to the letter string (the orthographic neighborhood) are supposed to contribute to the translation process. The aim of the experiments reported here was to empirically distinguish between these two categories of models. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to pronounce pseudowords containing the letter g. Results indicate that the phonological representation assigned to the letter g depends on the pronunciation favored by the lexical neighbors. Experiment 2 shows that lexical contribution to phonological assembly also takes place in lexical decision.