The use of phonological representations in guiding eye movements in the visual world paradigm

Across two visual world paradigm (VWP) experiments, Salverda and Tanenhaus (2010) observed an effect of orthographic overlap between targets and competitors in the absence of an effect of phonological overlap when mapping spoken targets onto briefly previewed printed arrays. They concluded that the use of orthographic knowledge can precede use of phonological knowledge during language-mediated mapping in the printed word variant of the VWP. The present experiments aimed to follow up on these studies to examine whether and when phonological and orthographic representations are used during language-mediated mapping. In Experiments 1 and 3, competitors shared high or low phonological overlap with the target but the same degree of orthographic overlap, and in Experiments 2 and 4, orthographic overlap differed between the competitors whereas phonological overlap was held constant. Overlap was manipulated between displays in Experiments 1 and 2 and within display in Experiments 3 and 4. In contrast with Salverda and Tanenhaus' (2010) findings, preferential viewing of the high over the low phonological overlap competitor was observed in Experiment 3, whereas effects of orthographic overlap were unreliable and temporally nondistinct in Experiments 2 and 4. These findings suggest that the use of phonological representations precedes the use of orthographic representations during mapping of spoken targets onto printed arrays in the VWP. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).