VISUAL LEXICAL DECISION FACILITATED BY INCIDENT CONGRUENT PHONOLOGY

In a task of lexical decision, a surface dyslexic was asked to disting uish a word from a nonword homophonic to it. In the first experiment a congruent auditory input diminished the subject's response time relat ive to a silent condition. In the second, an auditory word, which corr esponded to sublexical orthographic elements of the nonword, did not s low the subject's RT relative to a neutral auditory stimulus whereas a n auditory input congruent to the word again facilitated lexical decis ion. This suggests that phonology can activate specific lexial-orthogr aphic representations and facilitate lexical decision.