Using Spelling-Sound Correspondences

Abstract

Adult subjects learned spoken responses to nonsense words written in an artificial alphabet. Correspondences between letters and phonemes were hidden by the use of right-to-left correspondences. Even though subjects did not notice the existence of correspondences, they were able to decode new nonsense words in the same alphabet. In a second experiment, nonsense words written with hidden correspondences were read more quickly than nonsense words without correspondences. A third experiment suggested that this effect was due to the fact that similar words had similar responses. In general, the results suggest that correspondences can be used without the use of special correspondences, but when this occurs, people use examples rather than knowledge of the correspondences themselves.