Sources of information in word naming: A study of individual differences

Hypothetically, words can be named by spelling\u2013sound translation rules or by looking up a phonological code in a lexicon. Following J. Baron and C. Strawson (see record 1977-00326-001), naming performance was measured as a function of skill with each route, using sets of stimuli varying in reliance on either route. Ss were 73 college students. "Phoenicians" were defined to be better with rules than with look-up; "Chinese" were better at look-up than with rules. As predicted by Baron and Strawson, Phoenicians named low-frequency regular words and nonwords faster than Chinese. Contrary to predictions, Phoenicians were also faster at naming irregular words of various frequencies. Implications of these results for various dual-route models vs single-route models are discussed