The effect of shared structure and content on reading nonwords: Evidence for a CV skeleton

Four experiments examined the effect of shared skeletal structure versus co ntent overlap on naming printed nonwords. Experiments 1-2 compared priming among nonwords sharing either skeletal structure and content (e.g., dus-DUS ) or structure alone (e.g., pid-BAF) with controls that differed from the t arget in the number of skeleton slots (e.g., pid-BAF vs. plid-BAF). Convers ely, in Experiments 3-4, same-versus different-structure primes contrasted only in the ordering of CV skeletal slots (e.g., fap-DUS vs. ift-DUS). Prim ing effects were modulated by shared content and skeletal similarity. The s ensitivity of skeletal priming to the abstract arrangement of consonants an d vowels suggests that skeletal representations assign distinct slots for c onsonants and vowels. Readers' sensitivity to skeletal structure in nonword identification indicates that assembled phonological representations are c onstrained by linguistic knowledge.