What are the letters e and é in a language with vowel reduction? The case of Catalan

Abstract Although the Latin-based orthographies of most Western languages employ vowels with accent marks (e.g., é vs. e), extant models letter and word recognition are agnostic as to whether these accented letters their non-accented counterparts represented by common or separate abstract units. Recent research in French a masked priming alphabetic decision task was interpreted favoring idea that orthographic units (orthographic account: é?e e?é; Chetail & Boursain, 2019). However, more parsimonious explanation is salient (accented) less perceptually similar non-salient (non-accented) than vice versa (perceptual e?é, but é?e; Perea et al., 2021a; Tversky, 1977). To adjudicate between two accounts, we conducted experiment Catalan, language complex orthography-to-phonology mapping for e?/e/, /?/, /?/). Results showed faster responses identity visually condition targets (é–É < e–É), not (e–E = é–E). Neither above accounts can fully capture this pattern. We propose an based on rapid activation both phonological codes.