Activation of phonological codes during eye fixations in reading

Abstract

Two experiments addressed the issue of whether phonological codes are activated early in a fixation during reading using the fast-priming technique (S. C. Serene & K, Rayner, 1992). Participants read sentences and, at the beginning of the initial fixation in a target location, a priming letter string was displayed, followed by the target word. Phonological priming was assessed by the difference in the gaze duration on the target word between when the prime was a homophone and when it was a control word equated with the homophone on orthographic similarity to the target. Both experiments demonstrated homophonic priming with prime durations of about 35 ms, but only for high-frequency word primes, indicating that lexicality was guiding the speed of the extraction of phonological codes early in a fixation. Evidence was also obtained for orthographic priming, and the data suggest that orthographic and phonological priming effects interact in a mutually facilitating manner.