READING ALOUD - EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF A WHOLE WORD NONSEMANTIC PATHWAY

It is widely assumed that the presence of an associative priming effec t during the oral reading of orthographies with consistent spelling-so und correspondences signals the use of an orthographic code for lexica l access (the addressed routine). Relatedly, the failure to observe su ch a priming effect has been taken to indicate the use of a routine th at relies on subword spelling-sound correspondence knowledge (the asse mbled routine). This logic depends on the assumptions that (a) only th e addressed routine (whole word orthographic knowledge) can produce pr iming, and (b) that it necessarily does so (i.e., is automatic). The p resent experiments show that, taken alone, neither the presence nor ab sence of priming effects in oral reading permit an inference as to whe ther the addressed or assembled routine is used. Converging operations which do permit such an inference are reported. The data support the view that (i) components of the word recognition system operate intera ctively such that use of the assembled routine yields priming under ce rtain conditions, and (ii) normal readers of a shallow orthography use a nonsemantic, whole word pathway to name words.