L. Buchanan et D. Besner, READING ALOUD - EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF A WHOLE WORD NONSEMANTIC PATHWAY, Canadian journal of experimental psychology, 47(2), 1993, pp. 133-152
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.