Orthographic coding and lexical processing

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One principle of virtually all theories of skilled reading is that word identification is a competitive process. When a word is first perceived, an orthographic code is created representing the letters in the word. That code then activates the mental ("lexical") representation of not only the presented word but also those for similarly spelled words. In time, the mental representation of the word being read should inhibit those of the inappropriate words, with its representation becoming the only representation remaining active. The purpose of this proposal is to continue my examination of the processes by which the appropriate word wins this competition. One major question is how to characterize the orthographic coding process. What has become clear is that the set of words with representations that are at least partially activated by any particular orthographic code is extensive. For example, our data have shown that reading the letter string avactino creates an orthographic code that activates the lexical representation for the word VACATION (in spite of the fact that the orthographic codes of avacitno and VACATION have no letters in the same positions). This fact indicates that the two orthographic codes must be somewhat similar. One key issue, therefore, is how to characterize the nature of orthographic coding in a way that reflects this similarity. A second key issue is how to characterize the lexical selection process, that is, the process by which the correct word wins the competition. The means of examining these issues involves presenting single (target) words or nonwords on a computer screen following word or nonword "primes" which are presented briefly and masked so that they do not reach consciousness. Readers are timed while they overtly respond to the targets either by classifying them as words or nonwords or responding "yes" or "no" as to whether they match a pre-specified stimulus. By gaining a better understanding of the nature of orthographic coding and of the competition process among representations in the mental lexicon, we hope to obtain a better foundation for understanding: a) normal reading in adults, b) how best to teach children to read and c) how to remediate reading difficulties in reading disabled individuals.