Experiments on the spelling-to-sound regularity effect in word recognition

University of California, San Diego, California 92037 Subjects responded faster to words with regular spelling-to-sound correspondences than to words with irregular correspondences in both a naming task and a lexical decision task. The locus of the small, but significant, regularity effect was investigated in further experiments. When subjects were forced to respond faster than usual, via a response-deadline technique, no regularity effect was apparent in either their reaction times or error rates. In another experiment, no Regularity by Stimulus Quality interaction was obtained. It was concluded that the phonological recoding implied by the existence of the regularity effect takes place subsequent to lexical access.