Similar attentional, frequency, and associative effects for pseudohomophones and words

Abstract

Between the presentation and recall of 1 or 5 digits, Ss performed a secondary task of naming a visually presented letter string--a pseudohomophone (e.g., FOLE, HOAP) or its real-word counterpart (FOAL, HOPE). Memory load interacted with frequency (HOPE vs. FOAL, HOAP vs. FOLE) but not with lexicality (HOPE vs. HOAP, FOAL vs. FOLE). This outcome counters models in which nonwords are named by a slow (resource-expensive) process that assembles phonology and words are named by a fast (resource-inexpensive) process that accesses lexical phonology. When the associative priming-of-naming task was secondary to the memory task, pseudohomophone associative priming (HOAP-DESPAIR, FOLE-HORSE) equaled associative priming (HOPE-DESPAIR, FOAL-HORSE) and was affected in the same way by memory load. Assembled phonology seems to underlie the naming of both words and nonwords.