Impairment of rhyme judgments by silent and overt articulatory suppression

Two experiments showed that articulating “blah” repeatedly aloud or silently interfered with the speed and accuracy of judging whether pairs of words rhymed. Articulation from another voice affected only accuracy, and foot tapping had no effect. This suggests that it is mainly the articulatory component of articulatory suppression that interferes with this task and that rhyme judgments of words depend on an articulatory code or an acoustic code accessed via articulation.

A third experiment confirmed these effects on speed of judgment, but there were no significant effects on errors in this experiment. Non-verbal use of the articulatory musculature in chewing also slowed performance. Similar results were obtained for word and non-word rhyme judgments, though the latter effects were somewhat weaker. It is argued that the results fail to support the theory that there are different methods of accessing phonology for words or non-words and indicate that access to phonology was via articulation, rather than a means to achieving articulation. If the task incorporated mechanisms employed in normal reading, the results refute suggestions that conversion of print to sound, whether for words or non-words, occurs prior to retrieval of an articulatory code.