The development of lexical representations: evidence from the position of the diverging letter effect

In this article, the position of the diverging letter effect has been used to investigate the interactions between lexical and sublexical information during reading acquisition. The position of the diverging letter effect refers to the fact that nonwords derived from words by changing a letter are read more quickly when the diverging letter is toward the end of the string than when it is at the beginning. The position of the diverging letter effect has been explained as a result of the interaction between sublexical procedures, which operate serially, and lexical procedures, which operate in parallel, on the letter string. We demonstrated that the literacy level of the reader determines whether facilitation or interference effects for late diverging nonwords are observed. The oldest children showed the same effect as that shown by the adults. The youngest children showed a reversed pattern; late diverging nonwords were read more slowly and less accurately than early diverging nonwords. We propose that this pattern is due to the combination of (a) the readiness with which lexical information (which increases as literacy increases) is activated and (b) the refining of the mechanism that balances the contributions of the lexical and sublexical procedures.