PHONOLOGICAL RECODING OF NON-WORD ORTHOGRAPHIC RIME PRIMES

The effectiveness of nonword orthographic rime primes as a function of the regularity (as defined by grapheme-phoneme correspondence [GPC] r ules) of typical pronunciation was examined in this research. In Exper iments 1 and 2, predictions from GPC and orthographic rime unit accoun ts converged, but in Experiments 3 and 4 they diverged. Experiment 1 s howed that when nonword orthographic rimes were used to prime consiste nt regular words (e.g., mist) and atypically irregular words (e.g., pi nt), reliable priming was observed for regular words, but priming of a typically irregular words occurred only in the 2nd block of trials, af ter the orthographic rime prime itself had been primed by the Block 1 presentation of the target word. In subsequent experiments, only the 1 st block of trials was examined. Experiment 2 replicated the selective priming of consistent regular words observed in Block 1 of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, nonword orthographic rimes were as effective at p riming typically irregular target words (e.g., grind) as they were in priming inconsistent but typically regular target words (e.g., flint). Parallel results were observed in Experiment 4, in which nonword orth ographic rimes were as effective at priming target words with typicall y irregular orthographic rimes as they were in priming consistent regu lar target words. The results of these experiments show nonword orthog raphic rimes are not always phonologically recoded in accordance with GPC rules.