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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Holistic processing, a hallmark of face processing, has been shown for written words, signaled by the word
composite effect. Fluent readers find it harder to focus on one half of a written word (e.g., the first syllable of a
CV.CV word) while ignoring the other half (e.g., the second syllable), especially when the two halves are aligned
rather than misaligned. Given the linguistic nature of written words, in the present study, we examined whether
the word composite effect is modulated by phonology. In Experiment 1, participants saw two sequentially
presented CV.CV words and had to decide if the left half (first syllable) was the same or not, regardless of the
right half. The word pairs were either phonologically consistent (univocal orthography to phonology mapping;
e.g., TI is always /ti/ in Portuguese) or inconsistent (orthography can map into different phonological representations; e.g., CA can correspond to /ka/ or /kɐ/). The word composite effect was found for phonologically
consistent words but not for phonologically inconsistent words. In Experiment 2, timing of trial events was
reduced to test whether the influence of phonology was fast and automatic. Similar to what was found in
Experiment 1, the word composite effect was found only for phonologically consistent words. The faster trial
events in Experiment 2 rendered it less likely that the influence of phonology in word composite effect is merely
a result of strategic processing. These findings suggest that holistic processing of visual words is modulated by
fast and automatic activation of lexical phonological representations.
Description
Keywords
Word composite effect Holistic processing of visual words Phonology Grapheme-phoneme consistency
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Ventura, P., Fernandes, T., Leite, I., Pereira, A., & Wong, A. C.-N. (2019). Is holistic processing of written words modulated by phonology?. Acta psychologica, 201, 102944.