Semantic effects as a function of reading skill in word naming of a transparent orthography

The highly transparent Turkish orthography was employed to examine imageabi lity in relation to level of skill in two experiments. In experiment 1, pre viously skilled readers (n = 24) named 40 high frequency and 40 low frequen cy words manipulated factorially with imageability. A significant main effe ct was only found for frequency. In experiment 2, a total of 44 adult Turki sh readers (16 very skilled and 28 skilled) named the same stimuli as in ex periment 1. The results showed an expected main effect for skill and freque ncy. However, whilst the main effect for imageability was nonsignificant, a 2-way interaction of skill by imageability and a 3-way interaction of skil l by imageability by frequency were found to be significant. Very skilled r eaders named high imageable low frequency words significantly faster than m atched low imageable low frequency words. Insofar as poor readers are conce rned the results are contradictory to previous findings in English whilst d ata from highly skilled participants are in line with those reported for sk illed readers for English. Implications of these findings on the existing l iterature are discussed.