Suppression effects in rhyme judgement tasks

Orthographic and phonological similarity were orthogonally manipulated in a rhyme judgement task. The effects were assessed of paced versus very rapid articulatory suppression on subjects' ability to make rhyme judgements when pairs of words were presented either simultaneously or successively. It was found that there were consistent suppression effects on the accuracy of subjects' judgements to visually similar non-rhyming pairs (e.g. “pint-tint”), visually dissimilar rhyming pairs (e.g. “fare-wear”) and visually similar rhyming pairs (e.g. “fall-tall), regardless of mode of presentation or speed of suppression. The size of the suppression effect was greatest for the visually similar non-rhyming word pairs. It was argued that subjects need to carry out a recheck for phonological similarity when word pairs are visually but not phonologically similar, and that encoding the words in articulatory form is particularly beneficial for making accurate rhyme judgements to such pairs.