On the role of set when reading aloud: a dissociation between prelexical and lexical processing

Two experiments investigated the role that mental set plays in reading aloud using the task choice procedure developed by Besner and Care [Besner, D., & Care, S. (2003). A paradigm for exploring what the mind does while deciding what it should do. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 311-320]. Subjects were presented with a word, and asked to either read it aloud or decide whether it appeared in upper/lower case. Task information, in the form of a brief auditory cue, appeared 750ms before the word, or at the same time as the word. Experiment 1 yielded evidence consistent with the claim that at least some pre-lexical processing can be carried out in parallel with decoding the task cue (the 0 SOA condition yielded a smaller contrast effect than the long SOA condition). Experiment 2 provided evidence that such processing is restricted to pre-lexical levels (the word frequency effect was equivalent at the 0 SOA and the long SOA). These data suggest that a task set is a necessary preliminary to lexical processing when reading aloud.