Mousikou Petroula, Coltheart Max
a Department of Psychology , Royal Holloway, University of London , Egham , UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2014;67(11):2239-46. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2014.915332. Epub 2014 May 22.
Reading aloud is faster when target words/nonwords are preceded by masked prime words/nonwords that share their first sound with the target (e.g., save-SINK) compared to when primes and targets are unrelated to each other (e.g., farm-SINK). This empirical phenomenon is the masked onset priming effect (MOPE) and is known to be due to serial left-to-right processing of the prime by a sublexical reading mechanism. However, the literature in this domain lacks a critical experiment. It is possible that when primes are real words their orthographic/phonological representations are activated in parallel and holistically during prime presentation, so any phoneme overlap between primes and targets (and not just initial-phoneme overlap) could facilitate target reading aloud. This is the prediction made by the only computational models of reading aloud that are able to simulate the MOPE, namely the DRC1.2.1, CDP+, and CDP++ models. We tested this prediction in the present study and found that initial-phoneme overlap (blip-BEST), but not end-phoneme overlap (flat-BEST), facilitated target reading aloud compared to no phoneme overlap (junk-BEST). These results provide support for a reading mechanism that operates serially and from left to right, yet are inconsistent with all existing computational models of single-word reading aloud.
与启动词和目标词彼此无关的情况（例如，farm - SINK）相比，当目标词/非词之前有与目标词共享其首个音素的掩蔽启动词/非词（例如，save - SINK）时，大声朗读的速度会更快。这种实证现象就是掩蔽起始启动效应（MOPE），已知这是由于亚词汇阅读机制对启动词进行从左到右的串行处理所致。然而，该领域的文献缺乏一个关键实验。有可能当启动词是真实单词时，它们的正字法/语音表征在启动词呈现期间会并行且整体地被激活，所以启动词和目标词之间的任何音素重叠（而不仅仅是首音素重叠）都可能促进目标词的大声朗读。这是唯一能够模拟MOPE的大声朗读计算模型（即DRC1.2.1、CDP + 和CDP ++ 模型）所做出的预测。我们在本研究中对这一预测进行了测试，发现与没有音素重叠的情况（junk - BEST）相比，首音素重叠（blip - BEST）而非尾音素重叠（flat - BEST）促进了目标词的大声朗读。这些结果为一种从左到右串行运作的阅读机制提供了支持，但与所有现有的单字大声朗读计算模型不一致。
