THE CONSISTENCY OF MULTIPLE-PRONUNCIATION EFFECTS IN READING - THE CASE OF JAPANESE LOGOGRAPHS

Naming latencies were measured for single- and multiple-reading (pronu nciation) kanji words with two frequency levels in Experiment 1. Resul ts showed that multiple-reading kanji are named much slower than are s ingle-reading controls, the effect of multiple reading being greater t han that of frequency. There was found to be measureable competition b etween two readings of a multiple-reading kanji. In Experiment 2, it w as demonstrated that there are multiple-reading kanji which are named as fast as single-reading kanji, thereby showing that no significant c ompetition is induced in them. In light of the theoretical perspective in this study, the conflicting results reported by previous studies a re discussed.