Anatomical differences between nose, palm, and foot, or, the body in question: Further dissection of the processes of sub-lexical spelling-sound translation

© 1987 by Stitchting International Association for the Study of Attention and Performance. We report two experiments which were designed to explore further the factors which underpin regularity and consistency effects in speeded word naming. Our results suggest that the body of a monosyllabic word, its vowel and terminal consonant(s), has more influence than the vowel alone in determining pronunciation latency. The concept of strength of correspondence between the body unit and the way it is pronounced in words (e.g. have, cave, save, rave, etc.) is examined. It is suggested that a weak pronunciation of the body (one which is dominated by a pronunciation which is more common in word neighbours) results in a reaction-time cost to low-frequency words. Inconsistent regular words and exception words with weak bodies are penalised to the same extent. Consistency effects are explained in terms of number of neighbours (strength of body correspondence) and competition between neighbours. A model of assignment of sub-lexical phonology is outlined.