Contextual effects on reading aloud: evidence for pathway control

Recent evidence suggests that the processes responsible for generating a phonological code from print are flexible in skilled readers. An important goal, therefore, is to identify the conditions that lead to changes in how a phonological code is computed. Five experiments are reported that examine whether phonological processes change as predicted by the pathway control hypothesis when reading aloud words and nonwords. Changes in reading processes were assessed by measuring the effect of predictable switches between stimulus categories across trials. The results of the present experiments are argued to be consistent with the pathway control hypothesis.