ARE PHONEMIC EFFECTS IN BACKWARD-MASKING EVIDENCE FOR AUTOMATIC PRELEXICAL PHONEMIC ACTIVATION IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION

Recently, several pieces of evidence have led to a resurgence in the p opularity of phonologically based approaches to visual word recognitio n. We review one such piece of evidence: Backward masking with a homop honic mask induces better target recognition than backward masking wit h a graphemic mask that shares the same letters with the target word a s the homophonic mask. From the advantage for words followed by homoph onic masks, the existence of automatic prelexical phonemic activation has been inferred. The present study investigates whether this phonemi c effect under backward masking conditions can be influenced by contro l strategies on the part of subjects. We demonstrate that the phonemic effect in backward masking is observed only when the procedure encour ages the use of phonological information. The implications for claims of automaticity on the basis of visual masking and for theories of rea ding in general are discussed. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.