NEW EVIDENCE FOR PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING DURING VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION - THE CASE OF ARABIC

Lexical decision and naming were examined with words and pseudowords i n literary Arabic and with transliterations of words in a Palestinian dialect that has no written form. Although the transliterations were v isually unfamiliar, they were not easily rejected in lexical decision, and they were more slowly accepted in phonologically based lexical de cision. Naming transliterations of spoken words was slower than naming of literary words and pseudowords. Apparently, phonological computati on is mandatory for both lexical decision and naming. A large frequenc y effect in both lexical decision and naming suggests that addressed p honology is an option for familiar orthographic patterns. The frequenc y effect on processing transliterations indicated that lexical phonolo gy is involved with prelexical phonological computation even if addres sed phonology is not possible. These data support a combination betwee n a cascade-type process, in which partial products of the grapheme-to -phoneme translation activate phonological units in the lexicon, and a n interactive model, in which the activated lexical units feed back, s haping the prelexical phonological computation process.