RIME NEIGHBORHOOD SIZE AND CONSISTENCY EFFECTS IN SKILLED READING

Abstract

A growing body of research on reading now suggests that the relationship between orthography and phonology should be studied at the level of the orthographic rime, rather than the grapheme. In a series of three experiments, two rime variables, rime neighbourhood size (RNS) and consistency, were investigated across two types of readers (visual-analytic/lexical and phonological/nonlexical) and two paradigms (lexical decision and visual search), with the objectives of ascertaining the loci of rime effects, the relationship between RNS and consistency, and reader type differences in rime effects. The results of Experiment 1, using lexical decision non word latencies, showed different consistency effects across readers, indicating that both lexical and non-lexical routes are sensitive to orthographic rimes but Experiment 2, using lexical decision word latencies, found reader type differences. The two factors had additive effects in visual-analytic readers but interactive effects in phonological readers. For visual-analytic readers, large RNS (but not consistency) resulted in shorter lexical decision latencies. For phonological readers, consistency effects were strong when lexical access was slow (as when processing small RNS words) and weak when lexical access was fast (as when processing large RNS words). In Experiment 3, using visual search position latencies, visual-analytic readers searched rime vowels of consistent nonwords faster. Taken together, these findings indicate that orthographic rimes do serve as functional units of word recognition in both lexical and nonlexical processing, reconciling current models of reading that have hitherto assumed one or the other of these routes is rime-sensitive. Implications of these findings for modifications to models of reading are discussed.