Journal of Memory and Language 45, 648–664 (2001)
doi:10.1006/jmla.2001.2790, available online at http://www.academicpress.com on
Pseudohomophone Effects and Phonological Recoding Procedures
in Reading Development in English and German
Usha Goswami
Institute of Child Health, University College London, United Kingdom
Johannes C. Ziegler
CNRS and University of Provence, France
Louise Dalton
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
and
Wolfgang Schneider
Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Germany
Two experiments were carried out to compare the development of phonological recoding procedures in children learning to read English and German. Reading of nonwords that sound like real words, so-called pseudohomophones (e.g., faik), was compared to both reading of nonwords that were orthographically and phonologically
similar to real words (e.g., dake) and reading of nonwords that were orthographically and phonologically dissimilar (e.g., koog). Data were obtained for 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old English and German children in naming (Experiment 1) and for 8- and 9-year old children in lexical decision (Experiment 2). In naming, significant pseudohomophone (PsH) effects were found in English but not in German. In lexical decision, in contrast, significant PsH
effects were found in German, but not in English. These results are interpreted in terms of the levels of orthography and phonology that underlie the reading procedures being developed by children who are learning to read
more and less transparent orthographies. © 2001 Academic Press
Keywords: phonology; reading pseudohomophones; phonological recoding; lexical decision.
Studies of reading development increasingly
recognize the importance of cross-language
We thank the teachers and children of St. Luke’s Primary
School, Romsey Junior School, and The Spinney School,
Cambridge, and Thornhill School, London, England, and four
Grundschulen in Würzburg along with the Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Schule, Dietzenbach, Germany, for taking part in these
studies. We also thank Kerstin Schenk and Alisa Miller for
their help with testing and data analysis, and Heinz Wimmer
and Linda Seigel for helpful comments on the manuscript.
Support for this research was partly provided by a Medical Research Council Project Grant to Usha Goswami (G9326935N)
and a von Humboldt Research Fellowship from the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation to Usha Goswami. Preparation of
this article was supported by an Alliance travel grant to Usha
Goswami and Johannes Ziegler (PN 00.230).
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Usha
Goswami, Behavioural Sciences Unit, Institute of Child
Health, University College London, 30 Guilford St., London, WC1N 1EH, UK. E-mail: [email protected].
comparisons in attempting to understand how
children learn connections between sounds and
letters. A number of such recent studies have
shown that orthographic consistency in different
languages has an effect on the phonological recoding skills that are basic to the acquisition of
reading (e.g., Frith, Wimmer, & Landerl, 1998;
Goswami, Gombert, & De Barrera, 1998;
Goswami, Porpodas, & Wheelwright, 1997;
Landerl, Wimmer, & Frith, 1997; Wimmer &
Goswami, 1994). Children who are learning to
read more orthographically consistent languages, such as Greek, German, and Spanish,
appear to rely heavily on grapheme–phoneme
decoding strategies. Children who are learning
to read less orthographically consistent languages, like English, use a variety of decoding
strategies, supplementing grapheme–phoneme
648
0749-596X/01 $35.00
Copyright © 2001 by Academic Press
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
conversion strategies with the recognition of letter patterns for rhymes and attempts at
whole–word recognition.
The relative reluctance of English children to
rely on letter-by-letter decoding strategies is
often thought to reflect international differences
in literacy tuition. However, an alternative possibility is that the diversity of decoding strategies displayed by children who are learning to
read English reflects cross-language differences
in orthographic consistency. English is an “outlier” in terms of the reliability of grapheme–
phoneme correspondences, and this should affect the grain-size of the psycholinguistic units
that are likely to play a role during reading. For
example, units such as rimes have been shown
to play a role in skilled word recognition and in
reading development in English (e.g., Goswami,
1986; Kirtley, Bryant, MacLean, & Bradley,
1989; Ziegler & Perry, 1998), but less so in
more consistent languages such as French or
German (e.g., Peereman & Content, 1997;
Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel, & Bonnet, 1998;
Ziegler, Perry, Jacobs, & Braun, in press).
Phonological skills are known to be important for learning to read in every orthography
that has been studied, including Chinese and
Japanese (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Caravolas & Bruck, 1993; Cossu, Shankweiler,
Liberman, Katz, & Tola 1988; Gombert, 1992;
Ho, Wong, & Chan, 1999; Huang & Hanley,
1995; Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980;
Mann, 1986; Porpodas, 1993; Schneider &
Naslund, 1999; Sprenger-Charolles et al., 1998;
Wimmer, Landerl, & Schneider, 1994). It is generally accepted that children’s phonological
skills determine how successful they will be in
applying phonological recoding strategies to
reading new words. Our aim in this paper is to
explore in more detail possible differences in
the nature of phonological recoding strategies
when orthographic consistency varies. We
chose to do this by studying pseudohomophone
(PsH) effects in English and German. Pseudohomophones are nonwords that sound like real
words, such as brane.
Depending on the task, PsH effects show up
either as a processing advantage (naming) or as
a processing disadvantage (lexical decision). In
649
naming, PsH nonwords are typically read faster
and more accurately than matched orthographic
controls. For example, naming BRANE is typically faster and more accurate than naming
BRATE (e.g., McCann & Besner, 1987, Taft &
Russell, 1992; for review, see Borowsky & Masson, 1999). This PsH advantage indicates that
phonological information at the whole-word
level improves nonword reading in English. In
lexical decision, in contrast, subjects typically
take longer and make more errors when deciding that the PsH BRANE is not a real word than
when making the same decision for the orthographic control BRATE (e.g., Besner & Davelaar, 1983; Coltheart, Davelaar, Jonasson, &
Besner, 1977; Rubenstein, Lewis, & Rubenstein, 1971). This PsH disadvantage suggests
that phonological information is automatically
activated even in a task, such as lexical decision,
that could in principle be solved on a purely orthographic basis (see Frost, 1998, for a review).
PsH effects in lexical decision and naming tasks
have been obtained not only in English but also
in other languages, such as German and French
(e.g., Grainger, Spinelli, & Ferrand, 2000;
Ziegler, Jacobs, & Klüppel, in press).
PsH effects have been reliably found in children in both naming and lexical decision tasks
(e.g., Bosman & De Groot, 1996; Johnston &
Thompson, 1989; Laxon, Smith, & Masterson,
1995; Murphy, Pollatsek, & Well, 1989; Pring,
1984). In their study of PsH effects in a lexical
decision task with Dutch 7-year-olds, Bosman
and De Groot (1996) concluded “if the pseudohomophone effect . . . legitimizes the inference that assembled phonology underlies the
reading of beginning and skilled readers alike,
we have to conclude that a developmental shift
of the use of phonology in beginning reading
does not occur” (p. 739). These authors argued
that phonological mediation may be obligatory
from the beginning of visual word recognition, a
view that most developmental reading researchers would endorse (e.g., Goswami, 1993;
Share, 1995; Stuart & Coltheart, 1988; Wimmer,
Landerl, Linortner, & Hummer, 1990). In addition, however, we would argue that phonological mediation may operate at different grain
sizes in different orthographies. A smaller grain
650
GOSWAMI ET AL.
size (e.g., grapheme–phoneme conversion) may
be ubiquitous in orthographically consistent orthographies but may need to be supplemented
by large-unit strategies in orthographically inconsistent orthographies. Such large-unit strategies could be based on using letter patterns for
rhymes or syllables or whole-word phonology.
In the present study, the different effects of
PsH stimuli on performance in naming and lexical decision tasks are used to investigate the
phonological recoding strategies adopted by children who are learning to read more versus less
consistent spelling systems. PsH effects in naming are used to throw light on the nature and grain
size of phonological recoding strategies. If children who are learning to read orthographically
consistent orthographies like German rely heavily on grapheme–phoneme recoding strategies,
then nonword naming in German should be relatively impervious to PsH effects, because wholeword phonology can always be successfully derived by sublexical strategies. In contrast, if
children who are learning to read orthographically inconsistent orthographies like English
need to supplement small grain-size decoding
through the use of larger spelling units or wholeword phonology, a PsH advantage should be obtained in English. This would be the case because
the phonological identity of PsHs at the wholeword level should aid successful recoding.
While the PsH advantage in naming makes it
possible to investigate the grain-size of phonological recoding strategies, the PsH disadvantage in lexical decision makes it possible to investigate the importance of phonological
information during silent reading. The more
strongly phonological information is activated
during silent reading, the harder it should be to
reject PsH nonwords like BRANE in a lexical
decision task. A critical test of the psycholinguistic grain size hypothesis proposed earlier
would be to study PsHs that force grapheme–
phoneme recoding because “large-unit” lexical
analogies do not exist, such as faik, tirn. If
phonological information at the grapheme–
phoneme level can be activated more efficiently
and reliably in orthographically consistent languages such as German than in orthographically
inconsistent languages such as English, one
would expect a larger PsH disadvantage in lexical decision in German than in English.
For the present experiments, PsHs were created that were phonologically identical to real
words while being orthographically rather different from real words, for example faik, toffi,
and dynosor (English) and Hunt, Fänster, and
Karramäll (German). These items were
matched to orthographic controls that were both
orthographically and phonologically similar but
not phonologically identical to real words
(O⫹P⫹ controls), such as dake, loffee, and hinosaur (English), and Tund, Lenster, and
Laramel (German). Some of the earlier PsH
studies have been criticized for using PsHs that
were not only phonologically but also orthographically more similar to real words than their
controls (Martin, 1982; Taft, 1982). This critique does not apply to our study because our
PsHs were orthographically even less similar to
the real word than was the case for the orthographic O⫹P⫹ controls. This was partly because of the difficulty of creating PsH stimuli in
German. Due to the higher consistency of
spelling-to-sound correspondences in German,
it is necessary to use somewhat unusual
spellings in German in order to create PsHs, so
we also used unusual spellings in English. This
meant that the PsHs could only be read by using
grapheme–phoneme conversion, as larger-unit
analogies from real words were impossible. Notice, however, that although German is more
consistent than English in terms of spelling–
sound correspondences, it is the sound–spelling
inconsistency which makes it possible to create
PsHs, and English and German are fairly comparable on this dimension.
In addition to PsHs and orthographic controls, a third group of nonwords was of theoretical interest. These items had neither orthographic rhyme neighbors1 nor phonological
rhyme neighbors in the mental lexicon (O⫺P⫺
nonwords), such as faish, ricop, and dilotaf
(English), and Rinf, Tergah, and Nenaagan (Ger1
We use the term “orthographic rime neighbor” rather
than body throughout the manuscript in order to refer to
spelling units for both rimes (e.g., “ake” in cake) and superrimes (e.g., “icket” in ticket, “inosaur” in dinosaur).
651
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
man). These O⫺P⫺ nonwords could only be
read by assembling grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs), as they had no orthographic rime neighbors. The bisyllabic and trisyllabic O⫺P⫺ nonwords were in general
created by rearranging syllables of existing
words, so that the bodies of the syllables could
be familiar (e.g., daffodil–dilotaf). However, the
phonological unfamiliarity of the O⫺P⫺ nonwords may make the grapheme–phoneme assembly process more difficult, as it may be more
difficult to blend phonemes and activate output
phonological codes for these unfamiliar sequences of sounds. If children learning to read
German are more reliant on GPC strategies than
children learning to read English, then
grapheme–phoneme assembly for completely
unfamiliar sequences of graphemes and
phonemes should be less taxing on phonological
recoding procedures for German children.
Hence relatively small differences in the accuracy with which O⫺P⫺ nonwords are read relative to O⫹P⫹ nonwords might be expected for
German. However, relatively large differences
in reading accuracy might be expected for the
English children.
EXPERIMENT 1
Our first experiment compared children’s accuracy in reading PsHs, O⫹P⫹ controls, and
O⫺P⫺ nonwords in English and German. Word
length was manipulated by using items that
were either monosyllabic, bisyllabic, or trisyllabic. The English and German children were
from Grades 2, 3, and 4 (ages approximately 7,
8, and 9 years, respectively), but the groups
were matched on reading age rather than on
chronological age using English or German
standardized tests of reading (English, Schonell
Graded Word Reading Test, Schonell &
Goodacre, 1971; German, Würzburger Leise
Leseprobe, Küspert & Schneider, 1998). Matching for reading age does not create an absolute
match, but it does ensure that average readers in
each language group are being compared at each
reading age level.
Subjects across orthography were equated
as far as possible for their knowledge of the
real words upon which the PsHs and ortho-
graphic controls were based. We predicted that
if German children rely more heavily on
grapheme–phoneme recoding strategies than
English children, then the PsH advantage in
naming should be smaller for German children
than for English children. Further, German
children should be better at reading O⫺P⫺
nonwords, and they should exhibit stronger
word length effects.
Method
Participants. For the English children, three
groups of 12 subjects at each reading age level
took part in the experiment (7 years, 8 years, 9
years). For the German children, 13 7-year-olds,
14 8-year-olds, and 22 9-year-olds were tested.
This was because reading age was much more
closely tied to chronological age in the German
children, enabling larger groups of children to
be used from the participating schools. The English children were taught reading by a “mixed”
method utilizing both whole-word recognition and grapheme–phoneme conversion. The
German children were taught reading by
grapheme–phoneme conversion. The children
were matched across language as closely as possible for reading age on standardized tests of
reading. Their knowledge of the real words from
which the O⫹P⫹ nonwords were derived was
also measured. For the 8- and 9-year-olds,
TABLE 1
Mean Reading Age in Years and Months and Real Word
Knowledge of the English and German Children
in Experiment 1
% Real words correct
Language
English
German
Reading age
Mono
Bi
Tri
7 yrs, 5 m
(3.2)
8 yrs, 8 m
(8.3)
9 yrs, 8 m
(5.8)
7 yrs, 8 m
(2.6)
8 yrs, 7 m
(3.5)
9 yrs, 5 m
(3.3)
46.9
(21.6)
82.3
(15.7)
89.6
(12.6)
100
(0)
100
(0)
100
(0)
71.4
(19.5)
96.9
(5.7)
100
(0)
94.2
(7.9)
97.3
(5.9)
99.7
(1.3)
49.0
(27.0)
93.8
(6.0)
98.4
(2.8)
84.1
(11.0)
91.1
(11.4)
92.6
(8.3)
Note. Standard deviations in parentheses.
652
GOSWAMI ET AL.
knowledge of the real words was approximately
equivalent across orthography (8- and 9-year-old
children in both orthographies knew over 90% of
the words). For the 7-year-olds, the English children knew on average 56% of the real words,
whereas the German children knew 93% of the
real words. Different rates of reading acquisition
is a familiar finding in cross-linguistic comparisons between beginning readers of consistent
and inconsistent orthographies, with English children typically lagging behind children learning
more consistent orthographies (e.g., Goswami et
al., 1997, 1998). Subject characteristics in the
two orthographies are shown in Table 1.
Stimuli. The nonwords used as a basis for the
cross-language comparisons are shown in the
Appendix. All nonwords were derived from regular words. At each syllable level, we constructed 22 items for the English children and 24
items for the German children. These comprised
eight PsHs and their respective O⫹P⫹ controls
and six (English) or eight (German) O⫺P⫺
nonwords, each repeated twice during the list.
The PsHs were constructed such that their pronunciation but not their spelling was identical to
that of a real word. Orthographic (O⫹P⫹) controls shared the orthographic and phonological
rime of the same real word but they were not
phonologically identical to real words. The PsHs
were thus orthographically less similar to the real
word than was the case for their controls. Finally,
O⫺P⫺ nonwords had unfamiliar spelling patterns
for rimes and did not rime with real words. Our
aim in creating the O⫹P⫹ orthographic controls
was to avoid the common confound that PsHs are
not only phonologically but also orthographically
more similar to real words than their respective
controls (Martin, 1982). To check that this had
been achieved, orthographic similarity indices for
PsHs and O+P+ controls were calculated
(Kwantes & Marmurek, 1994). The orthographic
similarity index quantifies orthographic similarity
between a nonword and a real word; it varies between 0 (no orthographic overlap) and 100 (complete orthographic overlap). On this measure, our
PsHs were orthographically less similar to the real
words (mean ⫽ 67.3) than the O⫹P⫹ controls
(mean ⫽ 78.8). Thus, any advantage of PsHs over
O⫹P⫹ controls cannot be attributed to greater or-
thographic familiarity per se. The mean log baseword frequency for PsHs did not differ much
across language (monosyllables, English 2.5, German 2.9; bisyllables, English 2.7, German 2.4; trisyllables, English, 2.1, German 1.4; CELEX).
Procedure. Each subject was seen for four experimental sessions. In the first session, the children were given a standardized reading test
(English children, the Schonell Graded Word
Reading Test; German children, Würzburger
Leise Leseprobe) and were also asked to read
the real words on which the nonwords were
based. In the second, third, and fourth sessions
the nonword reading task was administered.
Separate sessions were used for each syllable
level. Over the experiment, three different orders were used, so that children received either
monosyllables followed by bisyllables and trisyllables, bisyllables followed by trisyllables
and monosyllables, or trisyllables followed by
monosyllables and bisyllables. In each session,
a short word and nonword reading practice at
the appropriate syllable level was given, and
then the nonword reading task was administered. To increase the reliability of the measures,
each nonword was presented twice.
In the reading task, one word was presented at
a time in semirandom order (so that all eight
nonwords in a given category were seen once
before any repeats). The children were asked to
read each word as quickly and as accurately as
possible. They were instructed to have a guess at
a word if they possibly could, and if they were
unable to guess they were allowed to say “don’t
know.” The children were timed on their reading
reaction time for each word, and the lists were
tape-recorded, allowing any errors to be noted.2
The task was administered on a Macintosh
PowerBook 520c computer using SuperLab
software. For each item, a fixation spot appeared
for 500 ms followed by the target word. When
the subject began to make a verbal response, the
reaction time was taken by the computer. The
presentation of the word was then terminated by
the experimenter when the child finished read2
Owing to equipment malfunction, RTs collected during
the experiment were not reliable for the German children
and hence RT data are not reported further.
653
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
TABLE 2
Mean Percentage of Nonwords Read Correctly in Experiment 1 as a Function of
Word Type, Language, and Age
English
Age
7 Years
8 Years
9 Years
Mean
German
PsH
Controls
O⫺P⫺
PsH
Controls
O⫺P⫺
40.6
(27.9)
68.9
(18.5)
80.6
(16.5)
63.4
31.1
(28.0)
61.3
(24.9)
76.4
(20.3)
56.3
20.8
(26.4)
43.1
(27.0)
64.3
(28.3)
42.7
91.0
(10.9)
92.7
(8.2)
90.0
(14.5)
91.2
90.1
(13.4)
95.1
(8.2)
92.9
(15.5)
92.7
81.8
(19.3)
87.8
(12.3)
83.5
(20.2)
84.4
Note. PsH, pseudohomophones; Controls, orthographic controls; O⫺P⫺, orthographically and
phonologically unfamiliar controls. Standard deviations in parentheses.
ing it. Prior to receiving the experimental task,
the children were given two practice lists. The
first list contained six real words, each presented
twice, and the second list contained six nonwords, each presented twice. The aim of the
practice lists was to familiarize children with
nonwords and with the computerized presentation of the experiment, and also with the need to
read the words quickly and accurately.
Results
Preliminary analyses showed that order of
presentation of the different sessions had no effect on performance. Performance with the three
types of nonwords (PsHs, O+P+ controls,
O⫺P⫺ nonwords) was analyzed in terms of the
percentage of nonwords read correctly. In scor-
ing nonword accuracy, any pronunciation that
was plausible according to grapheme–phoneme
rules was accepted as correct, even if it was not
analogous to the real word chosen as a basis for
generating the nonword. The accuracy data are
presented in Tables 2 and 3.
Inspection of Table 2 suggests that the English
children displayed a consistent facilitation in reading the PsHs in comparison to the O⫹P⫹ controls.
Such a PsH advantage was not apparent in the
German data. Inspection of Table 3 suggests a
length effect for the German children only. As predicted, the English children read the O⫺P⫺ nonwords much more poorly than the other types of
nonwords. In comparison to the English data, the
O⫺P⫺ effect was much smaller in German: The
German children read the very difficult O⫺P⫺
TABLE 3
Mean Percentage of Nonwords Read Correctly in Experiment 1 as a Function of
Stimulus Length (Number of Syllables), Language, and Age
English
German
Age
Mono
Bi
Tri
Mono
Bi
Tri
7 Years
30.2
(22.4)
52.5
(23.2)
66.8
(25.7)
49.8
39.4
(33.7)
71.6
(23.7)
85.7
(14.6)
65.6
22.9
(26.2)
49.1
(25.6)
68.8
(23.1)
46.9
93.1
(8.0)
97.4
(5.0)
94.4
(11.8)
95.0
89.7
(10.3)
90.5
(10.0)
88.7
(15.4)
89.6
80.0
(21.4)
87.8
(11.8)
83.2
(21.6)
83.7
8 Years
9 Years
Mean
Note. Mono, monosyllables; Bi, bisyllables; Tri, trisyllables. Standard deviations in parentheses.
654
GOSWAMI ET AL.
FIG. 1.
decision.
English and German pseudohomophone performance, inverse effects in naming versus lexical
nonwords almost as accurately as the other nonwords with the exception of the trisyllables. These
cross-language dissociations in the size of PsH and
O⫺P⫺ effects are illustrated in Fig. 1.
A 2 ⫻ 3 ⫻ 3 ⫻ 3 (Language ⫻ Age ⫻ Nonword type [PsH, O⫹P⫹, O⫺P⫺] ⫻ Syllable)
analysis of variance with repeated measures on
Nonword Type and Syllable was run, taking the
percentage of nonwords read correctly as the
dependent variable. Percentages were used to
make the English O⫺P⫺ data comparable with
the other nonword categories. The analysis
showed a significant main effect of Language,
F(1,79) ⫽ 125.2, p ⬍ .0001, a significant main
effect of Age, F(2,79) ⫽ 17.1, p ⬍ .0001, a significant main effect of Nonword Type, F(2,158) ⫽
83.2, p ⬍ .0001, and a significant main effect
of Syllable, F(2,158) ⫽ 43.9, p ⬍ .0001. There
were also significant interactions between Age
and Language, F(2,79) ⫽ 14.9, p ⬍ .0001,
Language and Syllable, F(2,158) ⫽ 32.2, p ⬍
.0001, and Language and Nonword Type,
F(2,158) ⫽ 9.3, p ⬍ .0001.
The main effect of Language arose because
the German children read the nonwords more
accurately (89% correct) than the English children (54% correct). The main effect of Age
arose because the 8- and 9-year-olds read significantly more nonwords correctly than did the 7year-olds. The interaction between Language
and Age showed that this pattern reflected nei-
ther language. For the English children, the 9year-olds read significantly more words correctly than the 8-year-olds, who in turn read significantly more words correctly than the
7-year-olds. For the German children, there
were no accuracy differences with age. The
main effect of Nonword Type arose because the
O⫺P⫺ nonwords (67% correct) were significantly more difficult to read than the O⫹P⫹
nonwords (77% correct) and the PsH words
(79% correct). The main effect of Syllable arose
because the bisyllabic words were significantly
easier to read (78% correct) than the monosyllables (72% correct), which were in turn significantly easier than the trisyllables (65% correct).
However, the main effects of Nonword Type and
Syllable were qualified by theoretically important interactions with Language.
The significant interaction between Language
and Nonword Type shows that the critical category of PsH stimuli were read differently by
children in the two languages.3 Post hoc inspec3
An item analysis established that the PsH effect was still
significant by items for the English children, where the item
data showed a main effect of Nonword Type, F(2,368) ⫽
42.6, p ⬍ .0001. However, item analyses cannot be provided
for the German children, due to data loss during a move. The
item analysis for the English data included a repetition factor, to ensure that repeating each nonword twice in each list
did not affect performance. The main effect of Repetition
was not significant, F(1,368) ⫽ 3.0, p ⬍ .08; most importantly, there were no interactions involving this factor.
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
tion of this interaction using Newman Keuls
post hoc tests showed that the PsH words were
read significantly more accurately than the
O⫹P⫹ controls by the English children. Both
nonword types were read significantly more accurately than the O⫺P⫺ stimuli. For the German children, the PsH stimuli and the O⫹P⫹
nonwords were read at the same level of accuracy. As with the English children, both nonword types were read significantly more accurately than the O⫺P⫺ stimuli. However, all
three nonword categories were read significantly more accurately by the German children
than by the English children.
Post hoc inspection of the interaction between
Language and Syllable (Newman Keuls) showed
that the bisyllabic advantage found overall was
due to the reading behavior of the English children. The English children were significantly better at reading the bisyllabic words (66% correct)
than the monosyllables or the trisyllables (monosyllables ⫽ 50% correct, trisyllables ⫽ 47% correct). The German children were significantly better at reading the monosyllables than the
bisyllables (95% correct versus 90% correct) and
were significantly better at reading the bisyllables
than the trisyllables (84% correct).
The high reading efficiency of the German
children meant that they were much better
overall at reading the nonwords, despite being
matched to the English children for reading
age. It is thus possible that ceiling effects are
causing the theoretically important interaction
in the accuracy data between Language and
Nonword Type. To examine this possibility, it
was decided to carry out a further analysis
comparing the 10 best English readers with the
10 worst German readers. This strategy enabled a close match for nonword reading level
(English children, 84.9% correct; German children, 85.2% correct). If the interaction between Language and Nonword Type remains
robust across this very stringent comparison,
then the hypothesis that German children rely
more heavily on sublexical recoding strategies
at the GPC level than do English children
would be supported. The analysis was a 2 ⫻ 2
⫻ 3(Language ⫻ Nonword Type ⫻ Syllable)
ANOVA, taking the number of PsH and
O⫹P⫹ nonwords read correctly as the depend-
655
ent variable. The analysis showed a significant
interaction between Language and Nonword
Type, F(1,18)⫽ 6.0, p ⬍ .05. The English children read significantly more PsHs correctly
(89%) than O⫹P⫹ control words (81%). The
German children read the two nonword types
with equal accuracy (PsHs 84% correct;
O⫹P⫹ controls; 86% correct). This result supports our general hypothesis that English children are less reliant on sublexical recoding
procedures at the grapheme–phoneme level
than are German children. Accordingly, English children are more affected by whole-word
phonology when attempting to generate plausible pronunciations for nonwords than are German children.
Discussion
English children showed a significant PsH
advantage in naming in comparison to the orthographic controls, whereas German children
did not. This supports our hypothesis that English children are more reliant on whole-word
phonology, whereas German children are more
reliant on sublexical recoding procedures at a
small grain size (GPCs). Both groups of children had to rely on small grain-size recoding in
order to generate pronunciations for the PsH
nonwords, as analogies based on orthographic
rhyme units were not possible. However, this
small unit recoding was facilitated when it approximated a whole-word entry in the phonological mental lexicon for the English children
only. The grain-size hypothesis is also supported by greater accuracy differences between
the O⫹P⫹ and the O⫺P⫺ nonwords for the
English children (average 14% advantage) than
for the German children (average 8% advantage). The O⫺P⫺ nonwords can only be read
using GPCs. Our results suggest that English
children use whole-word phonology as well as
sublexical recoding at both the small- and
large-unit levels when naming nonsense words.
This yields a significant difference between
PsHs and orthographic controls (an advantage
given by whole-word phonology) and a larger
difference between O⫹P⫹ nonwords and
O⫺P⫺ nonwords (an advantage given by familiar rhyme orthography; see also Goswami
656
GOSWAMI ET AL.
et al., 1997). German children utilize sublexical recoding strategies at a small grain size for
all types of nonwords, resulting in more efficient nonword reading than is found in English
children.
EXPERIMENT 2
The existence of PsH effects is often used as a
marker for the influence of phonological information on reading (e.g., Van Orden, Johnston, &
Hale, 1988; Ziegler, Van Orden, & Jacobs, 1997).
In this respect, the absence of PsH effects for the
German children in our previous experiment
might at first appear puzzling. Reading in a consistent orthography like German is thought to rely
more on phonology than reading in an inconsistent orthography like English (e.g., Frost, Katz, &
Bentin, 1987). It is important, however, to keep in
mind that PsH effects in naming address the issue
of the grain size of the psycholinguistic units used
in reading rather than the strength of phonological
activation per se. Therefore, our second experiment investigated the extent to which phonological information is used to access lexical information during silent reading. The PsH disadvantage
in lexical decision can be used as a marker for the
influence of phonological information during
silent reading. That is, if phonology is a primary
constraint during silent reading (e.g., Lukatela &
Turvey, 1994; Peter & Turvey, 1994; Rayner,
Sereno, Lesch, & Pollatsek, 1995; Van Orden,
1987; 1991; Ziegler & Jacobs, 1995), then it
should be harder to reject PsHs like BRANE than
controls like BRATE. Therefore, if German children employ more efficient phonological recoding
processes at the grapheme–phoneme level, as suggested by the pattern of accuracy advantages
found in Experiment 1, it can be predicted that
PsH interference effects will be stronger in lexical
decision for German children than for English
children.
Lexical decision data were therefore obtained
for new groups of English and German children.
The lexical decision task was based on the same
items that had previously produced a null PsH
effect for the German children in naming. Only
8- and 9-year-old children were compared in the
two languages, as in Experiment 1 English 7year-olds had known fewer of the real words
that formed the basis for nonword construction
than had German 7-year-olds. Real word knowledge is critical for the lexical decision methodology. As an additional check on real word
knowledge, both English and German children
received a spelling post-test to ensure that they
could distinguish the PsH spellings (e.g., faik)
from the correct spellings (fake). A similar procedure has been applied previously in adult research (e.g., Coltheart, Patterson, & Leahy,
1994).
Method
Participants. Two new groups of English and
German children took part in the experiment.
There were 14 English children and 14 German
children. The English children were selected from
a larger group of 33 children who completed the
experiment,4 and they were matched individually
to the German children on the basis of their
chronological age and percentile performance on
a standardized test of reading that yields percentiles (English, British Ability Scales Single
Word Reading; German, Würzburger Leise
Leseprobe). The mean age of the English group
was 8 years, 9 months, SD 7 months, with a mean
percentile on the BAS Single Word Reading test
of 49% (SD 19%). The mean age of the German
group was 8 years, 7 months, SD 4 months, and
the mean percentile on the Würzburger Leise
Leseprobe was 41% (SD 18%).
Stimuli. The nonword stimuli were identical
to those of Experiment 1. Each nonword list was
supplemented with 24 real words. The real
words were English–German translation equivalents with similar orthographic and phonological structure (e.g., boat/Boot, garden/Garten,
telephone/Telefon). Therefore, word familiarity
and age-of-acquisition should be almost identical across language. Because shorter words tend
to be more frequent than longer words, the
monosyllabic, bisyllabic, and trisyllabic words
were matched on word frequency according to
the CELEX frequency counts (81, 86, and 86
occurrences per million, respectively). The real
4
Control analyses established that exactly the same PsH
effects were found in the total English data set and in the
subset of 14 children reported here.
657
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
words used are shown in the Appendix. The
practice lists were changed accordingly.
Procedure. Each subject was seen for three
experimental sessions. In the first session, the
standardized test of reading was given along
with the first lexical decision task (either monosyllables, bisyllables, or trisyllables, depending
on which order group the child was in). In the
second session, the second lexical decision task
was given. In the third session, the child received the third lexical decision task, a control
RT task, and the spelling post-test.
In the lexical decision task, children were instructed to decide as quickly and accurately as
possible whether an item presented visually on a
computer monitor was a real word (as would
occur in their textbook) or a nonsense word. RTs
were measured from the onset of the item until
the child pressed one of two keys on a button
box. The spelling knowledge post-test was similar to the one used by Coltheart et al. (1994).
Children were shown all the PsHs in a random
order, typewritten on a sheet of paper in lower
case. On each line, one PsH was presented,
paired with its correct spelling (e.g., faik–fake).
The children were asked to circle the correct
spelling. The control RT task was an alphabetic
decision task (e.g., Jacobs & Grainger, 1991). In
this task, children were presented with real letters and alphanumeric characters (e.g., /, %, &).
Their task was to decide as quickly as possible
whether items presented one by one on a computer monitor were real letters or not. This task
was administered in order to check that the ability to make speeded decisions did not vary
across orthographies.
which is that German children should be slower
than English children to make lexical decisions on
PsH stimuli. The English and German children
performed approximately equivalently in the
spelling post-test (English mean ⫽ 10% errors;
German mean ⫽ 13% errors). Nevertheless, the
experimental data were adjusted for spelling errors on an individual basis. For each child, erroneous lexical decisions corresponding to PsH
spellings that were wrongly thought to be correct
on the spelling post-test were not counted as errors (e.g., if the child had circled “faik” as the correct spelling for “fake,” and had decided that the
PsH “faik” was a real word in the experiment, this
was not counted as an error for that child’s data).
All subsequent tables and analyses depend on this
adjusted data.
Performance with the three types of nonwords (PsH, O⫹P⫹, O⫺P⫺) was then analyzed in terms of lexical decision errors and
RTs, and the data are presented in Tables 4 and
5. The global pattern concerning accuracy is further illustrated in Fig. 1 (right side).
As seen in Fig. 1 (right panel), in the lexical decision task, the English children show virtually no
PsH disadvantage while the German children
show a strong PsH disadvantage. That is, English
children appear to be making lexical decisions on
TABLE 4
Mean Percentage of Errors in Experiment 2 as a Function
of Language, Word Type, and Word Length
English
PsH
Controls
O⫺P⫺
Mono
15.2
(14.9)
17.0
(13.5)
27.7
(20.9)
20.0
37.5
(26.9)
48.2
(27.2)
35.7
(22.4)
40.5
27.7
(22.0)
14.3
(12.8)
9.8
(14.0)
17.3
8.0
(10.5)
17.9
(12.7)
2.7
(5.3)
9.5
8.0
(9.3)
3.6
(7.6)
10.7
(14.6)
7.4
1.8
(4.5)
2.7
(5.3)
0.9
(3.3)
1.8
Bi
Results
Preliminary analyses compared performance
on the control RT task and the spelling post-test
across orthographies. The control RT data were
analyzed via a 2 ⫻ 2 (Language ⫻ Letter/Nonletter) ANOVA using the time taken to make a
speeded response as the dependent variable. The
analysis showed that the German children (848
ms) were significantly faster at making letter/nonletter decisions than the English children (1142
ms), F(1,26) ⫽ 4.58, p ⬍ .05. Note that this significant difference goes against our hypothesis,
Syllable
Tri
German
Mean
Mono
Bi
Tri
Mean
Note. Mono, monosyllables; Bi, bisyllables; Tri, trisyllables; PsH, pseudohomophones; Controls, orthographic controls; O⫺P⫺, orthographically and phonologically unfamiliar controls. Standard deviations in parentheses.
658
GOSWAMI ET AL.
TABLE 5
Mean RT per Word in Experiment 2 as a Function of
Language, Word Type, and Word Length
English
Syllable
PsH
O⫹P⫹
O⫺P⫺
Mono
1702
(1030)
2144
(1127)
1657
(802)
1834
2457
(746)
2758
(1167)
3582
(1398)
2932
1773
(821)
1691
(766)
2210
(1556)
1891
2171
(633)
2704
(793)
3385
(847)
2753
1581
(1169)
1786
(920)
1725
(1044)
1697
2227
(710)
2702
(855)
3679
(1206)
2869
Bi
Tri
German
Mean
Mono
Bi
Tri
Mean
Note. Mono, monosyllables; Bi, bisyllables; Tri, trisyllables; PsH, pseudohomophones; O⫹P⫹, orthographic controls; O⫺P⫺, orthographically and phonologically unfamiliar controls. Standard deviations in parentheses.
the basis of orthographic familiarity, whereas the
German children appear to be impeded in their
use of orthographic familiarity by automatic
phonological recoding. As can be seen in Table 4,
the English children found the orthographically
unfamiliar PsH stimuli relatively easy to reject,
with the exception of the trisyllables. For monosyllables, the English children found the orthographically familiar O⫹P⫹ stimuli more difficult
to reject than the other types of nonwords (consistent with rime-based coding). The German children had much greater difficulty in rejecting the
PsH stimuli than the O⫹P⫹ controls at all syllable lengths. In contrast, the O⫹P⫹ and O⫺P⫺
stimuli were easy for the German children to reject. Inspection of Table 5 suggests that there are
no marked differences in speed between the different nonword types. The only possible differences are for the longer words for the German
children only. The German children also appear to
be slower at making lexical decisions than the
English children. If it is recalled that the German
children were significantly faster in the control RT
task (alphabetic decision), then this could again be
indicative of automatic phonemic recoding of all
wordlike stimuli.
Accuracy data. A 2 ⫻ 3 ⫻ 3(Language ⫻
Nonword Type [PsH, O⫹P⫹, O⫺P⫺] ⫻ Sylla-
ble) ANOVA with repeated measures on Nonword Type and Syllable was run, taking the percentage of nonwords read correctly as the dependent variable, by subjects and by items. The
analysis showed a significant main effect of
Nonword Type, F1(2,52) ⫽ 49.1, p ⬍ .0001,
F2(2,21) ⫽ 77.8, p ⬍ .0001, and significant
two-way interactions between Language and
Nonword Type, F1(2,52) ⫽ 18.0, p ⬍ .0001,
F2(2,21) ⫽ 13.2, p ⬍ .0001, and Syllable and
Nonword Type, F1(4,104) ⫽ 4.1, p ⬍ .0001,
F2(4,42) ⫽ 2.6, p ⬍ .05. The two-way interaction between Language and Syllable was significant by subjects only, F1(2,52) ⫽ 9.0, p ⬍
.0005, F2(2,42) ⫽ 1.99, and the three-way interaction among Language, Nonword Type, and
Syllable approached significance by subjects
only, F1(4,104) ⫽ 2.4, p ⬍ .053.
The main effect of Nonword Type arose because the children made significantly more lexical
decision errors for the PsHs (30%) than for the
O⫹P⫹ controls (13%) and significantly more
lexical decision errors for the O⫹P⫹ nonwords
than the O⫺P⫺ nonwords (5%). However, this
main effect was qualified by a theoretically important interaction with Language. Post hoc inspection of this interaction (Newman Keuls post
hoc tests) showed that, for the English children,
there were no significant differences between the
number of lexical decision errors made in each of
the three nonword categories. In contrast, the German children made significantly more lexical decision errors for the PsH stimuli compared to the
other two categories of nonwords, which did not
differ. Post hoc inspection of the significant interaction between Syllable and Nonword Type
(Newman Keuls post hoc tests) revealed that the
PsH effect was only significant for the bisyllables
and trisyllables. For the monosyllables, the errors
made on the PsH stimuli and the O⫹P⫹ nonwords did not differ. However, as shown in Table
3, this was largely due to the relatively high number of lexical decision errors made for the O⫹P⫹
monosyllables by the English children. Post hoc
inspection of the interaction between Language
and Syllable (Newman Keuls post hoc tests),
which was only significant by subjects, showed
that the English children made similar numbers of
errors overall at all three syllable lengths. The
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
German children made significantly more errors
with the bisyllabic stimuli than with the monosyllables and trisyllables, which did not differ. Thus
the two language groups behaved slightly differently at different syllable lengths.
Reaction time data. A 2 ⫻ 3 ⫻ 3(Language ⫻
Nonword Type [PsH, O⫹P⫹, O⫺P⫺] ⫻ Syllable) ANOVA with repeated measures on Nonword Type and Syllable was run, taking the average response time per nonword as the
dependent variable. Only three effects were significant in both the analysis by subjects and that
by items. These were the main effect of Language, F1(1,26) ⫽ 11.5, p ⬍ .01, F2(1,120) ⫽
167.0, p ⬍ .001, because the German children
were significantly slower than the English children, the main effect of Syllable, F1(2,52) ⫽
21.4, p ⬍ .0001, F2(2,120) ⫽ 5.2, p ⬍ .01, because decisions about trisyllables took significantly longer than decisions about bisyllables,
which in turn took significantly longer than decisions about monosyllables, and the interaction
between Language and Syllable, F(2,52) ⫽
13.2, p ⬍ .0001, F2(2,120) ⫽ 9.7, p ⬍ .001.
Post hoc inspection of the latter interaction
using Newman Keuls post hoc tests showed that
only the German children showed a syllable
length effect. The German children took significantly longer to make lexical decisions about bisyllables than about monosyllables, and significantly longer to make lexical decisions about
trisyllables than about bisyllables. The English
children took an approximately equivalent
amount of time at each syllable length.
Discussion
In the lexical decision task, the PsH disadvantage was restricted to the German children. This
suggests that German children have more efficient sublexical recoding processes at the
grapheme–phoneme level than do English children. For them, the activation of phonological
information appears to be relatively automatic
and difficult to inhibit (cf. Ziegler & Jacobs,
1995). The automaticity of sublexical recoding
in German is supported by the significant word
length effect in lexical decision time found for
the German children only. Such word length effects persist in skilled adult reading, and they
659
may reflect a general pattern for readers of consistent orthographies (Ziegler et al., in press).
The English children did not show word length
effects and appeared better able to use orthographic familiarity as a basis for the rejection of
nonword items. The unfamiliar orthographic sequences used to spell the PsHs made these nonwords relatively simple to reject for English
children. Again, the pattern of results supports
the hypothesis that German children are reliant
on sublexical recoding strategies at a small grain
size, whereas English children are not.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Our basic aim in the two studies presented
here was to delineate more precisely the nature
of the psycholinguistic units that develop for
reading consistent versus inconsistent orthographies. Our results suggest that the grain size of
these units differs with orthographic consistency.
Orthographically consistent orthographies, like
German, appear to encourage a reliance on psycholinguistic units at a small grain size (GPCs).
Orthographically inconsistent orthographies,
like English, encourage reliance on a variety of
psycholinguistic grain sizes, including wholeword phonology and orthographic units corresponding to rimes. The efficiency with which
children can use small grain-size strategies is accordingly lower in inconsistent orthographies
like English, as clearly shown here. We would
expect this difference to be maintained, although
possibly reduced, in English children who had
been taught to read with a strong emphasis on
“small” units (GPCs, see debate between Duncan, Seymour, & Hill, 1997, and Goswami &
East, 2000). Evidence consistent with this notion
comes from data reported by Landerl (2000).
Landerl found that English 6- and 7-year-old
children taught by intensive “phonics”
(phoneme-based) methods made fewer errors on
the Wimmer and Goswami (1994) nonword set
(15.3 and 8.3%, respectively) than reading-levelmatched English children taught by a mixed
method (who made 17.9 and 10.4% errors, respectively). However, both English groups made
more nonword reading errors than reading-levelmatched German children (who made 4.3 and
4.6% errors, respectively). Similarly, it is known
660
GOSWAMI ET AL.
that highly skilled readers of English, who presumably have fully developed small-grain-size
sublexical recoding procedures, use large units
in reading. For example, in reading monosyllabic words and nonwords, English-speaking
adults show an advantage when the stimuli share
orthographic rimes with real words (see Forster
& Taft, 1994; Goswami et al., 1998; Ziegler &
Perry, 1998, Ziegler et al., in press). Our view is
therefore that sublexical procedures develop
somewhat differently according to the consistency of the orthography that is being acquired.
Previous cross-language studies that have compared nonword reading in consistent versus inconsistent orthographies also provide support for
our psycholinguistic grain size hypothesis
(Goswami et al., 1997, 1998). For example,
Goswami et al. (1997) compared English and
Greek 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children’s ability to
read bisyllabic and trisyllabic nonwords that
shared the spelling unit following the onset with
real words (O⫹P⫹ nonwords, e.g., toffee/loffee,
dinosaur/sinosaur), that shared rhyming phonology
with real words but used unfamiliar orthographic
sequences to represent phonology (O⫺P⫹ nonwords, e.g., loffi, synosor), or that shared neither
rhyming phonology nor familiar orthographic sequences with real words (O⫺P⫺ nonwords, e.g.,
dilotaf). The first and third types of nonwords
were identical to those used in the present studies,
whereas the O⫺P⫹ nonwords had the same
rhyme orthography as the PsHs used here.
Goswami et al. (1997) found that the orthographic familiarity of the rhyme was important to
decoding accuracy for the English children
(O⫹P⫹ nonwords like loffee read significantly
more accurately than matched O⫺P⫹ nonwords
like loffi), but not for the Greek children (O⫹P⫹
nonwords read as accurately as O⫺P⫹ nonwords). This supports the view that English children use large as well as small units in sublexical
recoding (loffee is easier to recode than loffi because of the orthographic analogy with toffee).
However, in the naming study presented here,
PsHs with the same orthographic rhyme patterns
as the O⫺P⫹ nonwords were read significantly
more accurately than the O⫹P⫹ controls (e.g.,
toffi ⬎ loffee). This suggests that larger correspondences such as orthographic rhyme units and
familiar whole-word phonology are both important for decoding in English, with relative influence depending on task characteristics.
Coupled with the present results, these patterns
of nonword reading (see also Goswami et al.,
1998, for English, French, and Spanish data) suggest that children who are learning to decode orthographically consistent languages like German
and Greek use grapheme–phoneme decoding
strategies from the beginning of reading.
Grapheme-by-grapheme strategies are highly efficient for decoding orthographically consistent
languages, and they develop relatively quickly
(for similar arguments, see also Frith et al., 1998).
In Goswami et al. (1997), the 7-year-old Greek
children read the unfamiliar O⫺P⫺ words with
90% accuracy, and in the current study the 7-yearold German children read the O⫺P⫺ words with
82% accuracy. Compare this to the English 7year-olds. In the current studies, the English 7year-olds read the very unfamiliar O⫺P⫺ words
with only 18% accuracy, and in Goswami et al.
(1997) the O⫺P⫺ words were read with 23% accuracy. The low efficiency of small grain-size
strategies in children learning to read English receives further support from other cross-language
comparisons (e.g., Frith et al., 1998; Wimmer &
Goswami, 1994). For example, Frith et al. (1998)
found that decoding accuracy for simple nonwords like blan and saker was around 59% in
English compared to 88% in German.
English children can of course use graphemeby-grapheme sublexical strategies, but these
strategies are less efficient in terms of achieving
accuracy and they develop relatively slowly. English children therefore supplement small grainsize procedures by forming orthographic recognition units for whole words and for larger letter
sequences like onsets and rhymes (see also
Goswami et al. 1998; Wimmer & Goswami,
1994). This is adaptive behavior. Reliance on
larger orthographic–phonological units and
whole-word recognition increases reading accuracy for the English orthography. The use of “logographic” reading in English children has been
widely documented, most notably by Frith
(1985). With regard to onsets and rhymes, statistical analysis of the spelling system of English
monosyllables has shown that the spelling– sound
661
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
consistency of the written language is greatest for
initial consonants (onsets), final consonants, and
rimes (see Kessler & Treiman, in press; Treiman,
Mullennix, Bijeljac-Babic, & Richmond-Welty,
1995). Accordingly, English children show
greater recoding accuracy when decoding nonwords that share orthographic rhyming chunks
with real words (O⫹P⫹ nonwords; see also
Goswami, 1986). English children’s greater reliance on larger spelling units also leads to small
or nonexistent word length effects. Small grainsize strategies lead to reliable word length effects,
with longer nonwords taking longer to decode
(see Ziegler et al., in press).
We do not wish to use these variations in reading and lexical decision behavior to argue that beginning readers of German never use larger units
like rimes when learning to read, or that English
children rely only on larger units like rimes. Our
view is that sublexical recoding procedures will
depend to some extent on the nature of the orthographic–phonological relations that operate in a
particular orthography. They will also depend on
the grain size emphasized in direct teaching (see
Duncan et al., 1997; Goswami & East, 2000;
Wimmer & Goswami, 1994). From this perspective, phonological recoding procedures should be
an important part of reading acquisition in every
alphabetic writing system. However, in a consistent orthography like German these procedures
will depend on grapheme–phoneme relations,
whereas in a less consistent orthography like English whole-word phonology and analogies based
on rhymes will also be important.
APPENDIX
Experiment 1
Real words
PsH
O⫹P⫹ control
O⫺P⫺
faik
tirn
taip
dul
roab
muf
gerl
raij
dake
murn
fape
rull
tobe
guff
rirl
tage
koog
zoip
zoash
faish
veeb
foaj
littel
tikket
butta
tacksi
pilloe
toffi
commick
windo
kittel
bicket
tutter
paxi
tillow
loffee
womic
tindow
verpil
perlem
larvol
terket
ricop
hixa
bannarnar
daffoddyl
dynosor
facktori
hosspital
pottatoe
pijarmas
tomartoe
danana
baffodil
hinosaur
dactory
pospital
fotato
tyjamas
pomato
English
Monosyllables
fake
turn
tape
dull
robe
muff
girl
page
Bisyllables
little
ticket
butter
taxi
pillow
coffee
comic
window
Trisyllables
banana
daffodil
dinosaur
factory
hospital
potato
pyjamas
tomato
dilotaf
saurnosi
rytorac
talpiros
dilotaf
majanys
todamo
662
Real words
GOSWAMI ET AL.
PsH
O⫹P⫹ control
O⫺P⫺
Hunt
Bärg
Rodt
Hauss
Kindt
Moond
Fünv
Dorv
Tund
Gerg
Dot
Faus
Zind
Rond
Sünf
Lorf
Lunss
Soork
Tordt
Günnd
Rinf
Därv
Zaudt
Font
Leesen
Bluume
Braaten
Vahter
Fänster
Nahse
Bruhder
Mässer
Nesen
Plume
Jaten
Gater
Lenster
Tase
Kluder
Flesser
Tergah
Meplu
Tenja
Safläs
Terlän
Därkluh
Setah
Senee
Tohmahte
Spigelai
Sebtämber
Värlihren
Karramäll
Beesenstihl
Spaggätti
Bannaane
Momate
Friegelei
Reptember
Nerlieren
Laramel
Vesenstiel
Blaghetti
Ganane
Temahmo
Laigefri
Bertämreb
Renlihnaer
Mällralar
Stihlsenvee
Tiggabla
Nenaagan
German
Monosyllables
Hund
Berg
Rot
Haus
Kind
Mond
Fünf
Dorf
Bisyllables
Lesen
Blume
Braten
Vater
Fenster
Nase
Bruder
Messer
Trisyllables
Tomate
Spiegelei
September
Verlieren
Karamel
Besenstiel
Spaghetti
Banane
Real Words Used in Experiment 2
Monosyllables.
English: boat, blue, film, hair, beer, wine, form, band, ground, chin, mouse, foot, ship, rich,
wish, ball, sand, green, loud, knee, lamb, luck, zoo, rice
German: Boot, Blau, Film, Haar, Bier, Wein, Form, Band, Grund, Kinn, Maus, Fuss, Schiff,
Reich, Wunsch, Ball, Sand, Grün, Laut, Knie, Lamm, Glück, Zoo, Reis
Bisyllables.
English: summer, garden, music, tiger, angel, finger, sister, mother, uncle, answer, pepper, football, canoe, cellar, coffee, concert, costume, hammer, honey, hotel, hunger, clinic, number, paper
German: Sommer, Garten, Musik, Tiger, Engel, Finger, Schwester, Mutter, Onkel, Antwort,
Pfeffer, Fussball, Kanu, Keller, Kaffee, Konzert, Kostüm, Hammer, Honig, Hotel, Hunger,
Klinik, Nummer, Papier
Trisyllables.
English: radio, family, medicine, telephone, museum, wonderful, serious, magazine, restaurant, president, everyone, professor, bakery, energy, theatre, instrument, positive, grandfather,
Africa, industry, elephant, argument, camera, December
German: Radio, Familie, Medizin, Telefon, Museum, Wunderbar, Seriös, Magazine,
Restaurant, Präsident, Jedermann, Professor, Bäckerei, Energie, Theater, Instrument, Positiv,
Grossvater, Afrika, Industrie, Elefant, Argument, Kamera, Dezember.
PSEUDOHOMOPHONE EFFECTS
REFERENCES
Besner, D., & Davelaar, E. (1983). Suedohohofoan effects in
visual word recognition: Evidence for phonological processing. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 37, 300–305.
Borowsky, R., & Masson, M. E. J. (1999). Frequency effects
and lexical access: On the interpretation of null
pseudohomophone base-word frequency effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception
and Performance, 25, 270–275.
Bosman, A. M. T., & De Groot, A. M. B. (1996). Phonologic
mediation is fundamental to reading: Evidence from
beginning readers. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 49A, 715–744.
Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and
learning to read: A causal connection. Nature, 310,
419–421.
Caravolas, M., & Bruck, M. (1993). The effect of oral and
written language input on children’s phonological
awareness: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 55, 1–30.
Coltheart, M., Davelaar, E., Jonasson, J. T., & Besner, D.
(1977). Access to the internal lexicon. In S. Dornic
(Ed.), Attention and Performance VI (pp. 535–555).
London: Academic Press.
Coltheart, V., Patterson, K., & Leahy, J. (1994). When a
ROWS is a ROSE: Phonological effects in written word
comprehension. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 47A, 917–955.
Cossu, G., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, I. Y., Katz, L., &
Tola, G. (1988). Awareness of phonological segments
and reading ability in Italian children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 1–16.
Duncan, L. G., Seymour, P. H. K., & Hill, S. (1997). How
important are rhyme and analogy in beginning reading?
Cognition, 63, 171–208.
Forster, K. I., & Taft, M. (1994). Bodies, antibodies, and
neighborhood density effects in masked form priming.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 844–863.
Frost, R. (1998). Towards a strong phonological theory of
visual word recognition: True issues and false trails.
Psychological Bulletin, 123, 71–99.
Frost, R., Katz, L., & Bentin, S. (1987). Strategies for visual
word recognition and orthographic depth: A multilingual comparison. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Human Perception and Performance, 13, 104–115.
Frith, U. (1985). Beneath the surface of developmental
dyslexia. In K. Patterson, M. Coltheart, & J. Marshall
(Eds.), Surface dyslexia (pp. 301–330). Cambridge:
Academic Press.
Frith, U., Wimmer, H., & Landerl., K. (1998). Differences in
phonological recoding in German- and English-speaking children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2, 31–54.
Gombert, J. E. (1992). Metalinguistic development. Hemel
Hempstead, HERTS: Havester Wheatsheaf.
Goswami, U. (1986). Children’s use of analogy in learning
to read: A developmental study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 73–83.
663
Goswami, U. (1993). Toward an interactive analogy model
of reading development: Decoding vowel graphemes in
beginning reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 443–475.
Goswami, U., & East, M. (2000). Rhyme and analogy in beginning reading: Conceptual and methodological issues. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 63–93.
Goswami, U., Gombert, J. E., & de Barrera, L. (1998). Children’s orthographic representations and linguistic
transparency: Nonsense word reading in English,
French and Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19,
19–52.
Goswami, U., Porpodas, C., & Wheelwright, S. (1997).
Children’s orthographic representations in English and
Greek. European Journal of Psychology of Education,
12, 273–292.
Grainger, J., Spinelli, E., & Ferrand, L. (2000). Effects of
baseword frequency and orthographic neighborhood
size in pseudohomophone naming. Journal of Memory
and Language, 42, 88–102.
Ho, C. S.-H., Wong, W.-L., & Chan, W.-S. (1999). The use
of orthographic analogies in learning to read Chinese.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 40,
393–403.
Huang, H. S., & Hanley, R. J. (1995). Phonological awareness and visual skills in learning to read Chinese and
English. Cognition, 54, 73–98.
Jacobs, A. M., & Grainger, J. (1991). Automatic letter priming in an alphabetic decision task. Perception & Psychophysics, 49, 43–52.
Johnston, R. S., & Thompson, B. G. (1989). Is dependence
on phonological information in children’s reading a
product of instructional approach? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 48, 131–145.
Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2001). Relationships between
sounds and letters in English monosyllables. Journal of
Memory and Language, 44, 592–617.
Kirtley, C., Bryant, P., MacLean, M., & Bradley, L. (1989).
Rhyme, rime, and the onset of reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 48, 224–245.
Küspert, P., & Schneider, W. (1998). Würzburger Leise
Leseprobe (Würzburger Silent Reading Test). Hogrefe:
Göttingen.
Kwantes, P. J., & Marmurek, H. H. C. (1994). Orthographic
effects in reading pseudohomophones. Paper presented
at the 35th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society,
St. Louis.
landerl, K. (2000). Influences of orthographic consistency
and reading instruction on the development of nonword
reading skills. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 15, 239–257.
Landerl, K., Wimmer, H., & Frith, U. (1997). The impact of
orthographic consistency on dyslexia: A German–English comparison. Cognition, 63, 315–334.
Laxon, V., Smith, B., & Masterson, J. (1995). Children’s
nonword reading: Pseudohomophones, neighbourhood
size, and priming effects. Reading Research Quarterly,
30, 126–144.
664
GOSWAMI ET AL.
Lundberg, I., Olofsson, A., & Wall, S. (1980). Reading and
spelling skills in the first school years predicted from
phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten. Scandanavian Journal of Psychology, 21, 159–173.
Lukatela, G., & Turvey, M. T. (1994). Visual lexical access
is initially phonological: 1. Evidence from associative
priming by words, homophones, and pseudohomophones. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
123, 107–128.
Mann, V. A. (1986). Phonological awareness: The role of
early reading experience. Cognition, 24, 65–92.
Martin, R. C. (1982). The pseudohomophone effect: The role
of visual similarity in non-word decisions. Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 34A, 395–409.
McCann, R. S., & Besner, D. (1987). Reading pseudohomophones: Implications for models of pronunciation and
the locus of word-frequency effects in word naming.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 14–24.
Murphy, L. M., Pollatsek, A., & Well, A. D. (1989). Developmental dyslexia and word retrieval deficits. Brain &
Language, 35, 1–23.
Peereman, R., & Content, A. (1997). Orthographic and
phonological neighborhoods in naming: Not all neighbors are equally influential in orthographic space. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 382–410.
Peter, M., & Turvey, M. T. (1994). Phonological codes are
early sources of constraint in visual semantic categorization. Perception and Psychophysics, 55, 497–504.
Porpodas, C. (1993). The relation between phonemic awareness and reading and spelling of Greek words in the
first school years. In M. Carretero, M. Pope, R. J. Simons, & J. I. Pozo (Eds.), Learning and Instruction
(Vol. 3, pp. 203–217). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Pring, L. (1984). A comparison of the word recognition
processes of blind and sighted children. Child Development, 55, 1865–1877.
Rayner, K., Sereno, S. C., Lesch, M. F., & Pollatsek, A.
(1995). Phonological codes are automatically activated
during reading: Evidence from an eye movement priming paradigm. Psychological Science, 6, 26–32.
Rubenstein, H., Lewis, S. S., & Rubenstein, M. A. (1971).
Evidence for phonemic recoding in visual word recognition. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 10, 645–657.
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55,
151–218.
Schneider, W., & Naslund, J. (1999). Impact of early phonological processing skills on reading and spelling in
school: Evidence from the Munich Longitudinal Study.
In F. E. Weinert & W. Schneider (Eds.), Individual development from 3 to 12: Findings from the Munich Longitudinal Study (pp.126–147). Cambridge: CUP.
Schonell, F., & Goodacre, E. (1971). The psychology and
teaching of reading. London: Oliver & Boyd.
Sprenger-Charolles, L., Siegel, L. S., & Bonnet, P. (1998).
Reading and spelling acquisition in French: The role of
phonological mediation and orthographic factors. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 68, 134–165.
Stuart, M., & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in
a sequence of stages? Cognition, 30, 139–181.
Taft, M. (1982). An alternative to grapheme-phoneme conversion rules? Memory & Cognition, 10, 465–474.
Taft, M., & Russell, B. (1992). Pseudohomophone naming
and the word frequency effect. The Quarterly Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 45A, 51–71.
Treiman, R., Mullennix, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R., & Richmond-Welty, E. D. (1995). The special role of rimes in
the description, use, and acquisition of English orthography, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
124, 107–136.
Van Orden, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling,
sound, and reading. Memory and Cognition, 15,
181–198.
Van Orden, G. C. (1991). Phonologic mediation is fundamental to reading. In D. Besner & G. Humphreys
(Eds.), Basic processing in reading: Visual word recognition (pp. 77–103). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Van Orden, G. C., Johnston, J. C., & Hale, B. L. (1988).
Word identification in reading proceeds from spelling
to sound to meaning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 371–386.
Wimmer, H., & Goswami, U. (1994). The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: Word
recognition in English and German children. Cognition, 51, 91–103.
Wimmer, H., Landerl, K., Linortner, R., & Hummer, P.
(1990). The relationship of phonemic awareness to
reading acquisition: More consequence than precondition but still important. Cognition, 40, 219–249.
Wimmer, H., Landerl, K., & Schneider, W. (1994). The role
of rhyme awareness in learning to read a regular orthography. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 12, 469–484.
Ziegler, J. C., & Jacobs, A. M. (1995). Phonological information provides early sources of constraint in the processing of letter strings. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 567–593.
Ziegler, J. C., Jacobs, A. M., & Klüppel, D. (in press).
Pseudohomophone effects in lexical decision: Still a
challenge for current models of word recognition.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
Ziegler, J. C., & Perry, C. (1998). No more problems in Coltheart’s neighborhood: resolving neighborhood conflicts
in the lexical decision task. Cognition, 68, 53–62.
Ziegler, J. C., Perry, C., Jacobs, A. M., & Braun, M. (in
press). Identical words are read differently in different
languages. Psychological Science.
Ziegler, J. C., Van Orden, G. C., & Jacobs, A. M. (1997).
Phonology can help or hurt the perception of print.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 23, 845–860.
(Received April 10, 2000)
(Revision received December 22, 2000)
(Published online August 22, 2001)