Sound and spelling in spoken word recognition

JOURNAL

OF MEMORY

AND

Sound

LANGUAGE

24, 165- 178 (1985)

and Spelling

in Spoken

Word Recognition

JOLA JAKIMIK Massachusetts

RONALD

Institute

of Technology

A. COLE AND ALEXANDER Carnegie-Mellon

I. RUDNICKY

University

In several experiments, lexical decisions about spoken words were shown to be influenced by the spelling of an immediately preceding item. Specifically, lexical decisions to onesyllable words were faster when part of the preceding word shared both the same sound and spelling. Thus, a lexical decision for “mess” was faster following “message” than following “letter.” Facilitation was not observed when words were related by sound alone (e.g., “definite”-“deaf”) or by spelling alone (e.g., “legislate’‘-“leg”). Analogous effects of spelling were obtained for nonwords; a decision about a nonword was facilitated only when preceded by a word with shared sound and spelling (e.g., “regular’‘-“reg”). The implications of these results for the role of spelling in the segmentation of speech and in lexical decisions are discussed. Q 1985 Academic press. 1~.

Every so often, while listening or talking, we are aware of the written form of a word, its spelling, or some of its letters. Awareness of spelling often occurs when figuring out an unusual spoken word, recognizing an infrequently heard name, trying to remember someone’s name, being in a tip-ofthe-tongue state, or revising a misperception or our interpretation of an ambiguous word (“Oh, you mean B-R-E-A-K, not B-R-A-K-E”). These real-life situations suggest that for literate listeners, processing speech can call upon spelling. The experiments reported here show that listeners use orthographic representations of spoken words in a lexical decision task. Laboratory investigations of mental spelling for speech are less numerous than This paper was prepared while the first author was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Parts of this research were presented at the Psychonomic Society Meeting, St. Louis, MO., 1980. We thank Molly Potter for helpful discussions. Address correspondence and requests for reprints to Jola Jakimik, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wis. 53706. Complete materials and results for individual items are available upon request.

studies of inner speech in reading. In an early study, Warren (197 1) demonstrated the ready availability of orthographic knowledge while listening to speech. He compared decisions about target sounds and target letters in spoken sentences, and found that overall identification times were equivalent for sound and letter targets. Spelling search was superior to speechsound search with respect to accuracy. For syllable-internal plosive targets (e.g., the sound “p” vs the letter P in “loops”) letters were detected faster than sounds. ’ More recently, Seidenberg and Tanenhaus (1979) showed an effect of orthography on judgments about spoken words using a rhyme-monitoring task. Listeners monitored lists of spoken words for one that rhymed with a given word (e.g., “tie”), and the targets were either orthographically similar (“pie”) or different (“rye”) from the specified word. Latencies were shorter to orthographically similar t Instead of phonetic or phonemic symbols to represent the sounds of speech, this paper uses quotation marks around words to indicate their spoken form, and upper case letters to indicate their written form. 165 0749-596X/85 Copyright All rights

$3.00

0 1985 by Academic Press. Inc. of reproduction in any form reserved.

166

JAKIMIK,

COLE,

AND

RUDNICKY

“chocolate’‘-“chalk.” As the examples rhymes. In another experiment, listeners show, the spelling of the repeated syllable decided whether pairs of spoken words rhymed. Rhyme decisions were faster when was either the same as in the preceding the words were spelled similarly; for ex- item, or different. ample, decisions about “pie” and “tie” were faster than decisions about “pie” and Method “rye.” In addition, similar spelling slowed decisions when two words did not rhyme; Subjects. Twelve undergraduates at Carfor example, “leaf” and “deaf.” In a negie-Mellon University participated in follow-up study, Donnenwerth-Nolan, Ta- the experiment. All were native speakers of nenhaus, and Seidenberg (1981) showed English who reported normal hearing. Subthat lexical access was occurring during jects received money or course credit for rhyme monitoring, by demonstrating se- their participation. mantic priming effects on rhyme latencies. Materials. The 18 target words occurred Thus, orthographic effects in the rhymetwice during the experiment. At one point monitoring studies occurred as a consein the list of items, they were preceded by quence of word recognition. a polysyllabic word that had the target The present experiments investigate the word as its first syllable. This was the Exrole of spelling in lexical decisions about perimental condition. For 9 of these words, the target word had the same spelling as the spoken words. The experiments examine the effects of orthographic similarity on lex- first syllable of the preceding word; for example, “message’‘-“mess”; “pillow”ical decisions, and compare decision times “pill.” For the other 9 words, the spellings to words when they are preceded by orthodiffered; for example, “stereo’‘-“stare”; graphically similar words and when they “spider’‘-“spy.” At another point in the are preceded by unrelated words. list, the 18 target words were preceded by a phonologically and orthographically unEXPERIMENT 1A related word; for example, “letter”“mess”; “blanket’‘-“pill”; “radio”All the experiments reported in this paper have the following general design. “stare”; “insect’‘-“spy.“ This was the The comparison between Experimental and Control condition. The Control words had Control conditions for the target words in- the same number of syllables and stress volves two occurrences of the targets for pattern as the phonologically related each subject: once preceded by a related words. The average numbers of letters in word, and once preceded by an unrelated the Control words were approximately word. Thus, each subject heard both Ex- equal to the average numbers of letters in perimental and Control conditions for each the related (Experimental) words; 7.2 and word. Over the set of words, the order of 7.0 letters, respectively, for Same Spelling Experimental and Control conditions was words, and 6.6 and 6.6 letters, respectively, counterbalanced. Throughout the experifor Different Spelling words. The mean Kumental session, the subject heard related cera and Francis (1967) frequencies of the and unrelated sequences intermixed. Experimental and Control preceding words In addition to orthographic similarity, were 23 and 48, respectively, for Same Experiment 1A manipulated phonological Spelling words, and 18 and 27, respectively, similarity in the form of repetition of a syl- for Different Spelling words. lable. The Experimental condition conFor half the target words, the Experisisted of sequences in which monosyllabic mental sequence occurred before the Contarget words were preceded by polysyllabic trol sequence; for the other half, the Conwords beginning with the same stressed syl- trol sequence preceded the Experimental lable; for example. “napkin’‘-“nap”; sequence. The two occurrences were sep-

SPEECH AND SPELLING

arated by at least 20 items. Note that Experimental and Control sequences were mixed throughout the experimental session. In addition to the 72 items described above, there were 72 word fillers, some of which were repeated. There were 48 nonword fillers like “gress,” “tribble,” “pern,” and “giller.” There were 10 “warm-up” items at the beginning of the list; they included 6 words and 4 nonwords. Altogether there were 202 items in the experiment, of which 52, or about onequarter, were nonwords. The 202 items were arranged into a single list, with the restriction that no more than three nonwords occurred in a row. The list was recorded by a male speaker (the second author), well practiced in recording experimental materials. The words and nonwords were spoken singly, about one every 2 seconds. The related words were not paired in any way in the spoken list, except that they occurred as consecutive items. On the second channel of the tape, a timer tone, inaudible to the subject, was aligned with the onset of each target word, that is, with the stop burst or with the onset of frication noise or nasal murmur. This tone started a digital millisecond timer that was stopped by the listener’s button press response. Reaction times were recorded for target items only. Procedure. Subjects were tested individually in a quiet room. They listened to the words binaurally over headphones, at a comfortable listening level. Their right hands rested on a response button. Subjects were told that they would hear a list of words and nonsense words, and were instructed to push the button in front of them if they heard a real word, and to do nothing if it was a nonword. They were urged to make their decisions as quickly as possible. The experimenter recorded RTs to the target words, and reset the timer if the subject had not responded to a word within 2 seconds. The experiment lasted about 15 minutes.

167

Results and Discussion

For each subject a mean reaction time for each of the four conditions in the experiment was calculated. For each target word, a mean RT for its Experimental and Control conditions in the experiment was calculated. The mean reaction times for subjects and items were analyzed in two separate 2 x 2 ANOVAs, with the factors Same versus Different Spelling, and Experimental versus Control conditions.* Table 1 presents the mean lexical decision times and the error rates. The main result was that lexical decisions were 52 milliseconds faster in the Experimental than in the Control condition, but only when the preceding word was both phonologically and orthographically similar. In both analyses, there was a signiticant interaction between Spelling and Experimental condition (F,( 1,ll) = 13.46, p < .Ol; F,(l,16) = 7.83, p < .02; min F’(l,27) = 4.95, p < .05) confirming that only Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences resulted in faster decision times. Separate one-way ANOVAs comparing Experimental and Control conditions showed that facilitation occurred only for Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences. For Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences, the difference between Experimental and Control RTs was significant in both analyses (F,(l,ll) = 11.56, p < .Ol; F2(l,8) = 9.75, p < .02; min F’(1,18) = 5.29, p < .05). For Same Sound-Different Spelling sequences, the difference between Experimental and Control RTs was not significant (F,(l,ll) = 2.03, p > .lO; F, = 1.86, p > .20). The analysis by subjects showed a sig? In the design of the present experiments, the target items were repeated in the second half of the experimental session; in all the experiments, RTs to target items were slightly faster in the second half of the experiment. In the analyses reported below, order of presentation is not treated as a factor, since the numbers of items with the two orders were balanced. In addition, facilitation due to sound and spelling similarity can be seen when only first occurrences of target words are considered (comparing different words in Experimental and Control conditions).

168

JAKIMIK,

MEAN

LEXICAL

Experiment

DECISION

TIMES (IN

COLE, AND RUDNICKY TABLE 1 msec) AND ERROR RATES FOR EXPERIMENTS

Same Sound-Same Experimental

Spelling Control

1A. lB,

AND 2

Same Sound-Different

Spelling

Experimental

Control

IA

779 3%

831 4%

871 5%

835 2%

IB

814 1%

847 3%

870 3%

869 1%

805 4%

860 3%

873 5%

895 4%

2

nificant main effect of Same versus Different Spelling target words (F,(l) 11) = 11.71, p < .Ol; F2(1,16) < 1). The overall difference in RTs was due to the fast RTs in the Same Spelling Experimental conditions, and the larger number of “s”-initial words (which had longer RTs) among the Different Spelling words. Neither analysis showed a significant overall effect of Experimental versus Control (F,( 1,ll) = 1.34, p > .25;F,(1,16) < 1). In summary, Experiment 1A found significantly faster lexical decisions to target words only when the preceding word shared sound and spelling. 1B In Experiment lA, listeners responded only to words. In the commonly used version of the lexical decision task, subjects respond to both words and nonwords. Experiment 1B was a straightforward replication of Experiment 1A using the conventional version of the lexical decision paradigm. EXPERIMENT

Method Subjects. Twelve undergraduates at Carnegie-Mellon University participated in the experiment. All were native speakers of English who reported normal hearing. Subjects were either paid or received course credit for their participation. Materials. The same stimulus tape as in Experiment 1A was used. Procedure. Subjects were tested individually in a quiet room. Their right and left

hands rested on two response buttons. They were told to listen to a list of items consisting of words and nonwords, and to push the right hand button if the item was a real word and the left hand button if the item was a nonsense word. They were urged to make their decisions as quickly as possible. The experimenter recorded the subject’s RTs to the target words, and reset the timer when needed. The experiment lasted about 15 minutes. Results and Discussion

For each subject, a mean reaction time for each of the four conditions was calculated. For each item, a mean RT for its Experimental and Control conditions was calculated. The mean RTs for subjects and items were analyzed in two separate 2 x 2 ANOVAs, with the factors Same versus Different Spelling, and Experimental versus Control conditions. Table 1 presents the mean lexical decision times and the error rates. As in Experiment IA, only the Same Sound-Same Spelling words showed faster lexical decisions in Experimental sequences. The difference between Experimental and Control RTs was 33 milliseconds. The interaction was not significant in either 2 x 2 analysis (F,(l,ll) = 1.42, p > .25; Fz(1,16) = 1.83, p > .lO). However, the difference between Experimental and Control conditions of Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences was significant in a oneway analysis by subjects (F,(l,ll) = 9.35, p < .02) though not by items (Fz(1,8) =

SPEECH AND SPELLING

4.00, p < .lO). The difference between Experimental and Control conditions was not significant for Same Sound-Different Spelling words (both F, and F2 < 1). In the 2 x 2 ANOVAs, the main effect of Same versus Different Spelling words was again significant in the analysis by subjects (F,(l,ll) = 16.46, p < .Ol) though not in the items analysis (F,(1,16) < 1). The overall difference between Experimental and Control conditions was not significant (F,(l,ll) = 1.81,~ > .20; Fz(1,16) = 1.55, p > .20). In short, the results of Experiment IB follow the same pattern as in Experiment 1A. Facilitation occurs when consecutive spoken words share both sound and spelling (“captain”-“cap”), and not when sound alone is shared (“chocolate”“chalk”). Experiments IA and 1B thus provide a preliminary demonstration that spelling affects lexical decisions about spoken words. EXPERIMENT

2

Experiment 2 was performed in order to replicate and extend the basic effect of spelling on word recognition, using a larger set of target items and with the addition of some necessary controls. Method Subjects. Twenty undergraduates at Carnegie-Mellon University took part in this experiment. All were native speakers of English who reported normal hearing. Subjects received either payment or course credit for their participation. Materials. Experiment 2 was essentially the same as the previous experiments. Each target word occurred twice. One occurrence was preceded by a phonologically related word that had the same spelling, for example, “fantasy’‘-“fan”; “carpet”“car”; or a different spelling, for example, “building”-“bill”; “coffee’‘-“cough.” The other occurrence was preceded by an unrelated (Control) word, for example, “company”-“fan”; “shoulder’‘-“bill.”

169

There were 26 sets of Same Spelling items, and 26 sets of Different Spelling items. The average numbers of letters in the Experimental and Control preceding words were 6.8 and 6.7, respectively, for Same Spelling items, and 6.5 and 6.5, respectively, for Different Spelling items. The corresponding mean word frequencies were 28 and 95, and 8 1 and 70 (from Kucera & Francis, 1967). Experiment 2 differed from the previous experiments in that catch trials of consecutive items like “family’‘-“fam”; “garbage”-“gar” were included to ensure that a repeated syllable was not always a real word. There were 26 sequences consisting of a polysyllabic word followed by a monosyllabic nonword that was the first syllable of the preceding word. The filler items consisted of both words and nonwords. In addition to the 26 words from the catch trials, there were 96 filler words, some of which were repeated. There were 26 nonword fillers from the catch trials, and 84 other nonwords. At the beginning of the list there were 10 warm-up trials, consisting of 6 words and 4 nonwords. Altogether there were 450 items in the experiment, of which 114, or about onequarter, were nonwords. The items were arranged in a single list, and recorded as in Experiment 1. Procedure. The procedure was identical to the one used for Experiment 1B. Results and Discussion Upon closer examination of the materials, several words intended to have the same spelling as the preceding word were found to have possible different spellings. These four target words were eliminated from further consideration. In addition, two items in the Different Spelling category produced an unusually large number of errors (more than 25%) for one of their occurrences. These two target words were excluded from further analyses. For each subject, a mean RT was calculated for each of the four conditions, and for each item, a mean RT was calculated

170

JAKIMIK,

COLE,

for its Experimental and Control conditions. The means for subjects and items were analyzed in two separate 2 x 2 analyses of variance, with the factors Same versus Different Spelling, and Experimental versus Control conditions. Table 1 presents the mean lexical decision times and the error rates. For target words preceded by a word with the same initial sound and spelling, lexical decisions were 55 milliseconds faster than in the Control condition. For words following a word with similar sound but with different spelling, the difference between Experimental and Control RTs was only 22 milliseconds. In the analysis of variance, the interaction was significant in the analysis by subjects though not by items (F,(l,lO) = 6.19, p < .05; F2 < 1). Separate one-way ANOVAs, comparing Experimental and Control conditions, revealed significant facilitation for Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences (F,( 1,19> = 23.04,~ < .Ol; F,(1,21) = 6.45, p < .02; min F’(1,32) = 5.04, p < .05) but not for Same Sound-Different Spelling sequences (F, and F2 < 1). In the 2 x 2 ANOVAs, the main effect of Same versus Different Spelling items was significant in the analysis by subjects though not by items (F,(1,19) = 38.28, p < .Ol; F2(1,44) = 3.07, p < .lO) and the main effect of Experimental versus Control was significant (F,(1,19) = 9.0,~ < .Ol; F2(1,44) = 4.14, p < .05). Both main effects were due to the faster RTs in the Same Spelling Experimental condition. The results of Experiment 2 corroborate the findings of Experiment 1. There was reliable facilitation of lexical decisions to spoken words when they followed words that overlapped in sound and spelling, but there was no facilitation due to sound similarity alone. Thus, in three different experiments, facilitation due to orthographic similarity was observed. 3 1 and 2, words related by

EXPERIMENT

In Experiments

AND

RUDNICKY

spelling were also related by sound. In Experiment 3, Same Spelling items that were not related by sound were included. Thus, Experiment 3 included experimental sequences like “fighter’‘-“fig,” in addition to sequences such as “message’‘-“mess” and “definite’‘-“deaf.” If the facilitation observed in sequences such as “message”“mess” in Experiments 1 and 2 was a purely orthographic effect, Same Spelling sequences like “fighter’‘-“fig” should also show facilitation. If on the other hand, facilitation required both sound and spelling similarity, “fighter’‘-“fig” should show no effect. Method Subjects. Subjects were 16 Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates from the psychology department summer subject pool. All were native speakers of English who reported normal hearing. Subjects were paid for their participation. Materials. The design of Experiment 3 was similar to Experiment 2. Each target word occurred twice. On one occurrence it was preceded by a related word; on another occurrence, it was preceded by an unrelated (Control) word. In Experiment 3 there were three kinds of related items. As in Experiments 1 and 2, preceding items were related by sound and spelling (e.g., “bushel’‘-“bush”), and by sound alone In addition, (e.g., “record’‘-“wreck”). there were preceding items that were related to the target by spelling alone (e.g., “legislate”-“leg”). There were 20 sequences of each type, and as many corresponding Control sequences. The average numbers of letters in the preceding words for Experimental and Control conditions were 6.0 and 6.2, respectively, for Same Sound-Same Spelling, 6.3 and 6.4, respectively, for Same Sound-Different Spelling, and 6.3 and 6.6, respectively, for Different Sound-Same Spelling. The corresponding mean word frequencies were 25 and 77, 49 and 68, and 88 and 59.

SPEECH

AND

There were 25 sequences of items that were catch trials in Experiment 3. The first item was a polysyllabic word and the second was a nonword that was related to the preceding item. There were three types of catch trials, corresponding to the three types of Experimental sequences: sequences related by sound and spelling (e.g., “princess”-“prin”); sequences related only by sound (e.g., “scissors”-“siz”); and sequences related only by spelling (For the first two (e.g., “tragic”-“trag”). types, the spellings for the nonwords were the preferred spellings from the pretest of Experiment 4. For the third type, the spellings were based on the first author’s intuitions.) There were 10 sequences of each of the first two types, and 5 sequences of the third type. The tiller items consisted of both words and nonwords. In addition to the 25 words from the catch trials, there were 60 filler words. In addition to the 25 nonwords from the catch trials, there were 80 nonword fillers. At the beginning of the list of items there were 10 warm-up trials, consisting of 6 words and 4 nonwords. Altogether there were 440 items, of which 109 (about onequarter) were nonwords. The items were arranged in a single list, and recorded on tape by the first author, following the same recording procedure as in the previous experiments. On the alternate channel of the tape, tones to start the timer were aligned with the beginning of each target word. For words beginning with fricatives, the tone was aligned with the onset of the next segment. Procedure. Subjects were tested individually in a quiet room. Their right and left hands rested on two response switches. They were told to listen to a list of words and nonwords, and to press the right hand switch if they heard a real word, and the left hand switch if they heard a nonsense word. They were instructed to make their decisions as quickly as possible. Reaction times and responses were recorded by a TERAK microcomputer located in the

171

SPELLING

same room. The subjects listened to the tape binaurally over headphones. The tape lasted about 20 minutes. Spelling post-test. After the lexical decision task, subjects were given a spelling test. Only the 40 words in the Different Sound-Same Spelling category (i.e., both “final” and “fin”) were presented. Subjects were told to print the word they heard as they thought it was spelled, and if they were not sure of the word or its spelling, to guess. The 40 words were presented in a scrambled order, that is, not as pairs. Each word was preceded by a number and was pronounced twice. The speaker was the same as in the main experiment. Subjects listened to the dictation over headphones. Results

and Discussion

The results of the spelling test are easily summarized: None of the subjects made any errors on the 40 words in the Different Sound-Same Spelling set. The subjects in the lexical decision experiment may be assumed to have known the correct spellings for these words. A mean RT for each subject in each condition was calculated, and the means were entered into an analysis of variance, with two within-subjects factors, Type of Similarity and Experimental versus Control conditions. A mean RT for each item in each condition was calculated, and the means were entered into an analysis of variance, with one between-items factor (Type of Similarity) and one within-items factor (Experimental vs Control conditions). Table 2 presents the mean lexical decision times and the error rates. The results showed only one instance of facilitation in the Experimental condition. RTs to target words preceded by a word with the same sound and the same spelling were (e.g., “nap” preceded by “napkin”) 106 milliseconds faster than in the Control condition. For the other Experimental sequences, RTs were approximately the same as in the Control conditions. The results of the 2 x 2 ANOVAs reflect

172

JAKIMIK,

MEAN

LEXICAL

DECISION

TIMES (IN

Same SoundSame Spelling Experimental 765 1%

COLE, AND RUDNICKY TABLE 2 msec) AND ERROR RATES FOR EXPERIMENT

Same SoundDifferent Spelling Control

Experimental

871 3%

861 5%

this pattern. The interaction between Type of Similarity and Experimental versus Control was highly significant, F,(2,30) = 22.42, p < .Ol; F,(2,57) = 6.94, p < .Ol; min F’(2,83) = 5.30, p < .Ol. One-way ANOVAs confirmed that only word sequences of the “napkin”-“nap” type showed faster RTs in the Experimental condition. For Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences the difference between Experimental and Control conditions was significant, F,(1,15) = 52.42, p < .Ol; F,(1,19) = 13.94, p < .Ol; min F/(1,28) = 27.95, p < .Ol. The difference was not significant for Same Sound-Different Spelling sequences (F,(1,15) = 2.19, p > .lO; F2 < 1) nor for Different Sound-Same Spelling sequences (F, and F2 < 1). In the 3 x 2 ANOVAs, the two main effects were significant by subjects, but not by items: for the overall difference among the three sets of items (F,(2,30) = 8.68, p < .Ol; F2 < l), for the overall difference between Experimental and Control RTs (F,(1,15) = 8.83, p < .OI; F,(1,57) = 3.02, p < .lO). Both main effects were due to the faster RTs in the Same Sound-Same Spelling Experimental condition. To summarize, Experiment 3 confirms the findings of Experiments 1 and 2. More importantly, Experiment 3 refines the finding that lexical decisions about spoken words are facilitated when the word has the same spelling as a preceding item by demonstrating that same spelling facilitation is limited to word pairs that are also related by sound. EXPERIMENT

Experiment

4 examined

4

whether

deci-

3

Different SoundSame Spelling

Control 835 1%

Experimental 839 1%

Control 839 1%

sions about nonwords could be facilitated by orthographically related preceding words. Experiment 4 included the basic four conditions of Experiments 1 and 2, and added several others. In one set of conditions, the preceding item was a word, and the target item was a nonword rather than a word (e.g., “princess”-“prin”). These conditions paralleled those in the preceding experiments in that the target was embedded in the preceding word. The new conditions were also parallel in that the spelling relation between the target nonword and the tirst syllable of the preceding word was manipulated. Just as written nonwords have preferred pronunciations (Glushko, 1979), spoken monosyllabic nonwords have preferred spellings. For example, as an isolated monosyllable, the first syllable of “precious” would be spelled PRESH rather than PREC or PRECI. The preferred spellings of the nonwords were either the same as the first syllable of the preceding word (“princess”-“prin”), or different (“precious’‘-“presh”). The selection of appropriate items is described under Materials. Method Subjects. Ten subjects participated in the experiment. They were students attending a summer session at Carnegie-Mellon University. All were native speakers of English who reported normal hearing. They received money for their participation. Materials. As described above, part of Experiment 4 duplicated the conditions of Experiments 1 and 2, using a new set of items. There were 16 word-word sequences in which the target word had the

SPEECH

AND

same spelling as the first syllable of the preceding word; for example, “dollar”“doll”; “dignity’‘-“dig.” There were 16 word-word sequences in which the target word had a different spelling than the first syllable of the preceding word; for example, “definite’‘-“deaf”; “ritual”“rich.” The average numbers of letters in the Same Spelling preceding words were 6.1 and 6.6 for Experimental and Control, respectively; for Different Spelling, 5.9 and 6.4. The corresponding mean word frequencies were 17 and 53, and 46 and 88. A second set of conditions in Experiment 4 involved nonword targets that were the first syllable of a preceding word. The word-nonword pairs were selected on the basis of a pretest that determined the preferred spellings for the nonwords. Spelling pretest. Subjects drawn from the same population as those in the main experiment were tested individually or in small groups in a 5- to lo-minute session. They were paid for their participation. Subjects heard a list of monosyllabic nonwords, then a list of real words. Each item was pronounced twice, and subjects were instructed to write it down as they thought it should be spelled. For the nonwords, they were given an example with the instructions. Twenty subjects participated in the testing of pairs with (anticipated) different spellings; 12 subjects provided spellings for the pairs with (anticipated) same spellings. In both tests, subjects spelled the nonwords first. They then heard the real words that had the nonwords as first syllables, in a different order. Twenty-five word-nonword pairs were pretested for the Different Spelling category. Sixteen pairs that met both of the following criteria were selected: (1) The real word was spelled correctly by at least 75% of the subjects. For example, the word “broccoli” was rejected, since many subjects provided spellings such as BROCKILY. (2) The nonword was spelled differently than the first syllable of the related word, and it was given a consistent

SPELLING

173

spelling (75% of the subjects agreed). For example, “naitch” (from “nature”) was rejected because there was no consensus on its spelling, although none of the spellings were NAT. Two items that were not spelled exactly the same by at least 15 out of 20 subjects were included in the main experiment anyway. Sixteen out of 20 subjects spelled the first syllable of “sugar” with an SH, but with different spellings for the vowel; 16 out of 20 subjects spelled the first syllable of “cactus” with ACK, but with different spellings for the initial consonant. Twenty-seven word-nonword pairs were pretested for the Same Spelling category. Only 14 met the criteria of correct spelling of the real word by at least 75% of the subjects, and a consistent (75%) spelling for the nonword that was the same as the spelling of the first syllable. (One nonword, “traf” from “traffic,” had two possible Same Spellings). Two more pairs, “chimney”“chim” and “platform”-“plat,” were added to make 16 pairs in this condition. Thus, there were 16 word-nonword sequences in which the nonword had the same spelling as the first syllable of the word; for example, “princess”-“prin”; “fashion”-“fash”; and 16 word-nonword sequences in which the nonword was spelled differently than the first syllable of the word; for example, “precious”“presh”; “faucet’‘-“fess.” Each of these Experimental sequences occurred once in the sequence of items, and at another point in the list, the nonword targets were preceded by an unrelated polysyllabic word, the Control condition. The average numbers of letters in the Experimental and Control preceding words were 7.2 and 5.8, respectively, for Same Spelling items, and 6.5 and 6.0, respectively, for Different Spelling items. The corresponding mean word frequencies were 24 and 75, and 56 and 88. In addition to the 256 items already described, there were 104 word tillers and 96 nonword fillers, some of which were repeated. There were 8 warm-up items (4

174

JAKIMIK,

MEAN

LEXICAL

DECISION

TIMES (IN

Same Sound-Same Experimental Words Nonwords

COLE,

AND RUDNICKY

TABLE 3 msec) AND ERROR RATES FOR EXPERIMENT Same Sound-Different

Spelling Control

Experimental

4

Spelling Control

888 3%

944 2%

958 4%

944 3%

1028 2%

1137 6%

1044 1%

1092 3%

words and 4 nonwords) at the beginning of the list, for a grand total of 464 items in the experiment. Of these, 164, or about onethird, were non-words. The items were arranged in a single list and recorded by the second author, as in the previous experiments. For items beginning with “s,” the timer tone was placed at the onset of the next segment. Procedure. The procedure for Experiment 4 was the same as that for Experiment 2. The experimenter recorded RTs to words and nonwords. Results For each subject, a mean RT was calculated for each of the eight conditions of the experiment. For each target item, a mean RT was calculated for its Experimental and Control conditions. The subject and item means were analyzed in two separate analyses of variance. The factors in the 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVAs were word versus nonword target, Same versus Different Spelling, and Experimental versus Control conditions. Table 3 presents the mean lexical decision times and the error rates. As can be seen in Table 3, both word and nonword targets produced faster lexical decision times when both their sound and spelling overlapped with a preceding word. The interaction between Same versus Different Spelling, and Experimental versus Control conditions was significant by subjects and by items (F,(l,9) = 20.03, p < .Ol; F2(1,60) = 5.87, p < .02; min F’(1,64) = 4.54, p < .OS). This pattern of results was not significantly different for words

and nonwords; the three-way interactions were not significant (F, and F, < 1). Separate one-way ANOVAs, comparing Experimental and Control conditions for the word targets, revealed facilitation for Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences (F&1,9) = 5.13, p = .05; F,(l,l5) = 4.46, p < .06) but not for Same Sound-Different Spelling sequences (F, and F2 < 1). Separate one-way ANOVAs, comparing Experimental and Control conditions for the nonword targets revealed significant facilitation for Same Sound-Same Spelling sequences (F,(l,9) = 24.29,~ < .Ol; F2(1,15) = 13.02, p < .Ol; min F’(1,24) = 8.48, p < .Ol) but not for Same Sound-Different Spelling sequences (F,(l,9) = 3.97, .10 > p > .05; F,(l,l5) = 2.90, p > .10).3 The 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVAs also showed that overall, lexical decisions were 141 mil3 For nonwords that were (usually) spelled differently than the first syllable of the preceding word, for example, “precious”-“presh” (PRESH), “money”“mutt” (MUN), RTs in the Experimental condition were somewhat faster (48 milliseconds), though not significantly so. This hint of facilitation can be attributed to some cases of shared spelling. Unlike words, nonwords do not have a single correct spelling. Categorization of these items as having Different Spellings was based on the preferred spellings for the spoken nonwords. Some of the spellings given by the pretest subjects were the same as the first syllable, and for some items, the Same Spelling represented a substantial proportion of the spellings given in the pretest. For example, “mun” (MUN) was spelled MON or MONE, both of which are the same spelling as the first syllable of “money,” by 25% of the subjects. All three are appropriate spellings of the spoken monosyllable; compare the words NUN, BUN, SON, TON. NONE, DONE. Thus the results for the so-called Different Spelling items included some degree of orthographic facilitation.

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liseconds faster to words than to nonwords (F,(1,9) = 36.42,~ < .OI; F,(1,60) = 34.57, p < .Ol; min F’(1,33) = 17.74, p < .Ol),

replicating a common finding with lexical decisions about written words. Overall, RTs in Experimental conditions were faster than in Control conditions (F,( 1,9) = 11.90, p < .Ol; F,(1,60) = 13.35, p < .OOl; min F’(1,29) = 6.29, p < .05). The overall difference between Experimental and Control conditions was larger for nonwords than for words, hence there was a significant interaction between the two effects just described (F,(1,9) = 7.89, p < .05; FJ1,60) = 4.46; p < .05; min F’(1,47) = 2.85, .I0 > p > .05).

In summary, Experiment 4 showed that orthographic facilitation occurs for both words and nonwords. Lexical decisions about words or nonwords that were the first syllable of a preceding word were facilitated only when the sound and spelling of the preceding word and the target item were the same. Discussion

The results of Experiment 4 can be summarized as follows: (a) A preceding word facilitates a lexical decision about an immediately following one-syllable word only if they share both sound and spelling (e.g., “dollar’‘-“doll”). (b) A preceding word facilitates a lexical decision about an immediately following nonword only if they share both sound and spelling (e.g., “princess”-“prin”). Thus, orthographic facilitation was obtained for nonwords under exactly the same conditions as for words. Experiment 4 demonstrates that lexical decisions about nonwords are also affected by their context. The results indicate that in addition to the general facilitation reported by Schuberth and Eimas (1977), specific fine-tuned effects of the preceding item can be produced. Such effects on nonwords rule out simple accounts of nonword decisions (such as deadline models) and provide constraints on models of facilitation (Schvaneveldt & McDonald, 1981).

They also underscore the point that the processing of nonwords overlaps with the processing of words. GENERAL

DISCUSSION

In all four experiments, lexical decisions were faster for one-syllable words when these followed a word with which they shared both sound and spelling; for example, “nap” following “napkin” was faster than “nap” following “teaspoon.” Lexical decisions were not facilitated by shared sound alone; for example, “cough” was not faster following “coffee.” Nor were lexical decisions facilitated by shared spelling alone; for example, “leg” was not faster following “legislate.” Analogous results were observed for nonwords. Lexical decision times for onesyllable nonwords were faster when these followed a word with which they shared both sound and spelling; for example, “prin” was faster after “princess.” Lexical decisions to nonwords were not facilitated by shared sound alone; for example, “presh” was not faster after “precious.” The pattern of errors and the subjects’ verbal reports also reveal a role of spelling in lexical-decisions. There were consistently more errors in sequences such as “definite”-“deaf,” where borrowed spellings (e.g., DEF) give the wrong lexical decision, than in sequences in which both sound and spelling were the same. Subjects’ verbal reports also suggest a spelling strategy. For example, one subject remarked, “One time I heard ‘record,’ then when I heard ‘wreck‘ I thought: R-E-C. That’s not a word.” Most subjects reported noticing that successive words often sounded alike (e.g., “message’‘-“mess”); some claimed to have tried to deliberately anticipate items. There was probably sufficient time between trials to use such a strategy, and the number of trials in which the strategy would work was substantialpolysyllabic words were followed by repeated first syllables 30 to 50% of the time. While subjects’ comments imply that spelling was used as part of the anticipation

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strategy, the possibility exists that anticipation was based on some property of words other than their spelling. In particular, facilitation may have been due to the use of phonological information. The nature of our stimuli allows us to test two hypotheses. The strategy of anticipating a specific item would be most successful when the subject could correctly anticipate the exact target item, that is, when only a single monosyllable can be derived from the polysyllabic word, assuming a phonemic representation of the word. For example, the word “pillow” allows only “pill” to be generated according to the constraints on English syllable structure whereas “banquet” allows two related syllables to be generated, “bang” and “bank.” If the listener is using phonemic (and not orthographic) information, then we should observe more facilitation for words in the former category. To test this possibility, we categorized the Same Sound preceding items for word targets in Experiments 2 through 4 as Unambiguous (i.e., yielding only one monosyllable-the actual target) or Ambiguous (i.e., yielding more than one monosyllable-the target plus others). In an analysis of variance, ambiguity did not account for any significant amount of facilitation, nor did it interact with any other factor. A second kind of information for an anticipation strategy is the segmentation provided by the acoustic-phonetic properties of the preceding word. In its phonetic realization, the word might have a particular segmentation into syllables; for example, “pan-try,” revealed by a “tr” cluster at the beginning of the second syllable. In this case, the syllabification of the longer word matches the target word “pan”; hearing “pan-try,” subjects might correctly anticipate “pan.” If the phonetic realization of “banquet” was “bang-quet,” the preceding word and the target “bank” would not match; hearing “bang-quet,” a subject might erroneously anticipate “bang.” A representative experiment was se-

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RUDNICKY

lected for analysis. For the 40 Same Sound preceding items of the Experimental condition in Experiment 3, a phonetically trained listener determined the syllabification, relying on phonetic characteristics such as the presence of syllable-initial allophones of “1,” and clusters with following segments. Items for which syllabification was ambiguous were eliminated (e.g., “pity,” spoken with a medial flap, see Kahn, 1980). The remaining items were categorized as matching or mismatching the target words. In an analysis of variance, syllable match did not account for any significant amount of facilitation. Neither phonological factor proved to have an effect, whereas spelling produced a strong effect. If anticipation is responsible for the observed facilitation, it must be anticipation that relies in some way on spelling and not purely on sound. The Use of Spelling in Segmenting Speech Even if the results of the present experiments are due solely to deliberate anticipation, it is interesting that facilitation was observed only when a repeated syllable retained its orthographic structure. We believe that orthographic structure is available and often used during spoken word recognition. Recently, several other studies have provided evidence that knowledge of written language is involved in judgments about speech. Rudnicky (1980a, 1980b) presented listeners with recorded passages of English prose, and instructed them to respond to the sound “b” whenever it occurred. Rudnicky observed false alarms to silent-letter B’s (e.g., responses to “comb” and “climbing”) on over half of all occurrences, suggesting that listeners sometimes monitor for speech sound targets by referring to the spellings of words. Morais, Cary, Alegria, and Bertelson (1979) examined the effect of literacy on the ability to manipulate segments of spoken

SPEECH AND SPELLING

words. They had subjects add or delete a segment (e.g., “p”) at the beginning of a spoken word or nonsense word, and found that illiterate adults were generally unable to perform this task. By contrast, a matched group of adults with some instruction in reading or writing performed the task well. Morais et al. concluded that knowledge of written language plays a role in the ability to analyze spoken language into constituent sounds. In experiments with fourth-grade pupils, Ehri and Wilce (1981) provided a direct demonstration that knowing the written form of words influences segmentation. Ehri and Wilce compared segmentations for words with similar pronunciations but with different spellings (e.g., “rich” and “pitch”). They found that children counted more sounds in the words with extra letters in their spellings. In a second experiment, Ehri and Wilce taught children alternative spellings for spoken nonsense words, such as ZITCH or ZICH. Children’s judgments of the number of sounds contained in a nonword were influenced by the number of letters in the spelling that was provided. Ehri and Wilce’s experiments provide strong evidence that readers’ conception of the segmental structure of words is shaped by knowledge of spelling. These studies indicate that listeners’ judgments about the segmental structure of speech are closely tied to their knowledge of written language. Breaking up spoken words into parts, segments or syllables, seems to call upon spelling knowledge.4 4 It is worth noting how well letters symbolize units in speech. For all of the Same Sound-Same Spelling items there is a perfect mapping between sound and spelling: For every phonetic segment, there is a corresponding letter or letter group, and the longer word comes apart into a letter string that represents the target syllable. For Same Sound-Different Spelling items, the mapping holds for most items. There are a few items in which letters do “double-duty” so that the spelling cannot be divided to represent the entire target syllable, namely banquet, ritual, and taxi. The difference in facilitation between the two sets of words cannot rest on this property, however, since so few items are involved.

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Conscious access to phonology may depend on consciously available orthography. Spelling and Lexical Decisions about Spoken Words

The most interesting result to emerge from these experiments is that spelling can play a role in lexical decisions about spoken words. Spelling information is not necessary for recognizing spoken words, yet spelling influences lexical decision timeswhich are thought to reflect word recognition processes. What role does spelling play in word recognition and lexical decisions? For the target words in the Same Sound Experimental condition, the pattern of errors suggests that lexical decisions were sometimes based on the spelled form of the item, where the spelling is one “borrowed” from the preceding word, either by deliberate anticipation or because repeated sound reactivated spelling. In sequences such as “definite”-“deaf,” where borrowed spellings (e.g., DEF) give the wrong lexical decision, there were consistently more errors than in the Control condition; in the verbal report quoted above, the listener thought that REC was a nonword. In sequences like “message”-“mess,” there were fewer errors than in the Control condition. Regardless of the source of facilitation for the targets, the present results imply the availability of a spelling for the target words during the lexical decision. If the facilitation was due to a strategy, then the spelling of the polysyllabic words was used for anticipating the next item, in its sound-symbolizing role. If the priming was not strategic, then the spelling for the preceding words was available as an inevitable consequence of word recognition. Why should a result of word recognition participate in lexical decisions? Let us consider the lexical decision task more carefully. Logically, a lexical decision requires verifying that a lexical entry exists and the task has usually been interpreted as consisting of this operation. However, it would

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be surprising to find that the human ability to recognize words involves performing lexical decisions per se, that is, that access processes explicitly signal success, or that they explicitly produce information about word-nonword status. The knowledge that “bread” is an English word, on this view, is not stored as a separate fact, but rather is a judgment based on the evaluation of other information stored with that word, including its spelling. The act of making a lexical decision is not a query concerning the “wordness” of a candidate but instead is an assessment on the part of the listener of what he or she knows about a particular word-using the lexicon to do the kind of work that it normally performs. The purpose of recognition is not just to get there, but to get at and use stored information. The proposal that lexical decisions use information that is the result of recognition is supported by James’ (1975) finding that semantic properties of words affect lexical decision times. This view of the lexical decision task has methodological and theoretical implications for studies using the task with spoken words and with written words. Since lexical decisions may involve substantial postrecognition processing, one must exercise caution in drawing conclusions about the course of recognition from data generated using this task. The availability of a particular representation in the lexical decision task need not imply that such a code plays a role in normal recognition. For example, the availability of phonological codes during lexical decisions for written words demonstrates that they are used in reading, but does not specifically locate them in either access or recognition. The connections between sneech and letter codes for words are in’creasingly being examined from both ends. The growing literature on effects of written language on spoken language challenges the prevailing View that speech is the privileged mental code for language. Spelling should

AND RUDNICKY

be viewed as a way of representing “in its own write.”

words

REFERENCES S., TANENHAUS, M. K., & SEIDENBERG, M. S. (1981). Multiple code activation in word recognition: Evidence from rhymemonitoring. Journal ofExperimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 7, 170-180. EHRI, L. C., & WILCE, L. S. (1981). The influence of orthography on readers’ conceptualization of the phonemic structure of words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 371-385. GLUSHKO, R. J. (1979). The organization and activation of orthographic knowledge in reading aloud. DONNENWERTH-NOLAN,

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104, 130-136. KAHN, D. (1980). Syllnble-based generalizations in English phonology. New York: Garland. KUCERA. H., & FRANCIS, W. N. (1967). Compurutional analysis of present-day English. Providence, R.I.: Brown Univ. Press. MORAIS, J.. CARY. L., ALEGRIA. J., & BERTELSON. P. (1979). Does awareness of speech as a sequence of phones arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7,323331. RUDNICKY, A. I. (1980a). Structure and familiarity in the organizafion of speech perception. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Carnegie-Mellon University. RUDNICKY, A. I. (1980b). Units of perception in phoneme monitoring. Paper presented at the Psychonomic Society Meeting, St. Louis, MO. SCHUBERTH, R. E., & EIMAS, P. D. (1977). Effects of context on the classification of words and nonwords. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human

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(Received May 11, 1982) (Revision received May 23, 1984)