Phonological codes and functional spelling units: Reality and implications

The grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence procedure for generating nonlexical phonological codes comprises two stages. The first, a parsing procedure, divides a letter string into functional spelling units (FSUs), each unit corresponding to a single phoneme. The second stage assigns the appropriate phoneme to the spelling units according to predictable or regular spelling-tosound patterns. In a lexical decision task, it was found that disrupting the spelling units, by alternating the case of letters within the units (e.g., ChuRCH) caused the pseudohomophone effect to be abolished. In contrast, disrupting the visual appearance of the letter strings but leaving the FSUs intact (e.g., CHurCH) allowed the pseudohomophone effect to emerge. The results are considered in the light of the recent “activation and synthesis” model proposed by Glushko (1979).