Do phonological codes constrain the selection of orthographic codes in written picture naming?

Sound-to-print consistency of picture labels was manipulated in five experi ments to investigate whether phonological codes constrain the selection of orthographic codes in written picture naming. In Experiments 1 and 2, parti cipants wrote down picture names which were inconsistent or consistent in t he phono-orthographic mapping defined either at the level of the word unit, i.e., heterographic homophones versus nonhomophones (Experiment 1), or at the sublexical level (Experiment 2). In neither experiment did phonographic consistency affect written latencies. Although more errors were observed f or inconsistent than for consistent picture names, the observation of a sim ilar error pattern in an untimed written picture naming (control) task sugg ests that errors resulted from inaccurate orthographic knowledge. In Experi ment 3, the position of the inconsistent units within the picture name (ini tial versus middle or final) was manipulated. The results indicated that on ly initial inconsistencies affected written latencies. Ruling out the hypot hesis that this finding merely results from the fact that handwriting start s before the orthographic encoding of the word endings, Experiments 4 and 5 showed that middle or Final inconsistencies influenced written latencies i n a spelling-to-dictation task. The findings are discussed as suggesting th at the build-up of orthographic activation from pictures is phonologically constrained through the sequential operation of sublexical conversion. (C) 2001 Academic Press.