Strategical invariance in lexical access: The reappearance of the pseudohomophone effect.

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Abstract
What is the role of phonological encoding in the lexical decision task? One source of evidence used in addressing this question has been the pseudohomophone effect in which slower lexical decision responses are made to nonwords which sound like words (e.g., AHMS), than to nonwords which do not sound like words (e.g., AHMS). The initial reports of the pseudohomophone effect were taken as evidence of the use of phonological evidence when letter-strings access the internal lexicon, but this view was challenged by reports of the inadequacy of the control nonwords against which the pseudohomophones are compared. However, the pseudohomophone effect can be observed with suitable controls, if the reader encounters homophones during testing. An explanation of this reappearance suggests that the presence of homophones induces a strategy which abandons the use of a spelling check as a basis for fast negative decisions. This induced strategy does not allow phonological evidence alone to exceed the threshold of the word recognition unit, but postpones the decision when a pseudohomophone is being considered. A lexical decision experiment is reported in which the effects of contexts are investigated. When readers encountered homophones during a training phase of the experiment, then a pseudohomophone effect was observed in a later block of trials which contained no homophones. A second group of readers encountered no homophones during either phase of the experiment and did not show a pseudohomophone effect. The difference is interpreted in terms of an invariant strategy in which the significance of phonological evidence and a spelling check, once decided, remains throughout the period of testing.

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