Phonological ambiguity and context sensitivity: On sublexical clustering in visual word recognition

In one lexical decision and three naming experiments, we established the effect of visually separating two letters that have to be considered jointly for pronunciation. Segmentation effects were studied for digraphic vowels and for ambiguous onset-letter (C) whose pronunciation is determined by the following vowel. Separating the two letters of a digraphic vowel (e.g., BO//EK) impaired reading in all experiments. Separating the onset C from the letter that resolves its ambiguity (e.g., C//ENT) did not impair reading more than separating an unambiguous onset-letter from the following vowel (e.g., T//ENT). However, there was a general processing cost for items with an ambiguous onset in terms of speed and accuracy. The conclusion is that local phonological ambiguity is resolved in two different stages: One that is sensitive to visual presentation and one that is not.