Spelling-sound consistency effects in disyllabic word naming

The present study investigated the role of spelling–sound consistency in naming printed disyllabic words. Participants in Experiment 1 named 1000 monomorphemic six-letter disyllabic words. Spelling–sound consistency measures for 11 orthographic segments were used to predict the naming latencies and error rates on the words. The consistency of vowel segments, particularly the one in the second syllable, contributed significantly to the prediction of naming latencies and error rates. In addition, the consistency of the BOB (body-of -the-BOSS, which is the orthographic segment containing the first vowel grapheme and as many following consonants as make an orthographically legal word ending) was also a significant predictor. The effect of the spelling-sound consistency of BOB and V2 segments was replicated in factorial experiments. These findings suggest that readers learn spelling-sound relationships not only for individual letters of graphemes but also for larger orthographic segments in disyllabic words, likely those that provide information about pronunciations beyond that of the individual letters of which they are composed. This study provides the kind of information that is needed to extend current models of word recognition beyond their current focus on monosyllabic words to more complex words.