Redefining the regularity effect

This study reports two experiments that further explore the regularity effect in single-word pronunciation. Experiment 1 shows that regularity effects are found only with irregular words that are “true” exceptions (e.g., PINT, MONK, BROAD). Words that are irregular in terms of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rules, but either are regular in terms of a higher order correspondence rule (e.g., PALM, HEALTH) or possess a divergent, although reasonably common, correspondence (e.g., GLOVE, HEAD), produce response times similar to those produced by regular words. These results indicate that the regularity effect is restricted to a smaller set of words than previously has been thought. Experiment 2 examines the regularity effect when subjects are required to delay their responses by 1,500 msec; no difference between exception and regular words is found. This finding indicates that previous demonstrations of the regularity effect cannot be attributed to articulatory differences between exception and regular word samples. Theoretical accounts of the regularity effect are considered briefly.