Orthographic Effects in Speech Perception: Evidence from an Auditory Lexical Decision Task with Brazilian Speakers of English

Abstract

The present study investigated whether orthographic effects arise in a speech perception task performed by Brazilian speakers of English. The study employed an artificial lexicon that simulated opaque and transparent grapho-phonic English relations in nuclear position (e.g., deit, toud). Subjects were compelled to learn this new set of words through a repeated-exposure training paradigm in which they were initially introduced to phonological forms associated with their visual pairings, followed by associations to their orthographic representations. An auditory lexical decision task was taken after training. Results indicated that orthographic consistency did not affect subjects’ latencies with the trained lexicon, although their reaction times were relatively longer with opaque items. However, orthography influenced latencies registered for untrained items in the task. We entertained that having to conduct lexical analysis with incoming unfamiliar auditory items compelled subjects to recruit orthography as a mechanism to aid lexical analysis. Orthographic recruitment was thus conceived as a strategic process that assists lexical decision in timed auditory tasks.