title: On the role of set when reading aloud: a dissociation between prelexical and lexical processing.
abstract: Two experiments investigated the role that mental set plays in reading aloud using the task choice procedure developed by Besner and Care [Besner, D., & Care, S. (2003). A paradigm for exploring what the mind does while deciding what it should do. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 311-320]. Subjects were presented with a word, and asked to either read it aloud or decide whether it appeared in upper/lower case. Task information, in the form of a brief auditory cue, appeared 750ms before the word, or at the same time as the word. Experiment 1 yielded evidence consistent with the claim that at least some pre-lexical processing can be carried out in parallel with decoding the task cue (the 0 SOA condition yielded a smaller contrast effect than the long SOA condition). Experiment 2 provided evidence that such processing is restricted to pre-lexical levels (the word frequency effect was equivalent at the 0 SOA and the long SOA). These data suggest that a task set is a necessary preliminary to lexical processing when reading aloud.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of Waterloo, Canada.
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Paulitzki
authors.forename: Evan F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Risko
authors.forename: Shannon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: O'Malley
authors.forename: Jennifer A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Stolz
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Besner
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011932:Reading; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary; D014831:Voice