Phonological and graphic representations of words in mental lexicon: Homophone processing while reading

This article presents an experimental study of the role phonological representation word in lexical access during silent reading Russian. The component (i. e. whether semantics can be accessed via decoding or directly from orthographic image word) is actively discussed modern psycholinguistics. Homophones serve as a testing ground for these hypotheses: if graphemes are decoded into phonemes order to semantics, then homophones will processed like homonyms, but visual word, treated all other neighbors. We address Russian investigate this question. In self-paced experiment, we show that target substituted either by homophone spelling control (an neighbor), semantic incongruence slows down processing post-target region. both and controls cause load, homophony does not facilitate semantically incongruent word. Our data give evidence direct entries mental lexicon dual-route model predicts experienced readers.