Phonology, Orthography, and Reading Process

Abstract

Since the beginning of experimental research on reading, the majority of studies have concentrated on what is unique to reading: how do we access the meaning of a printed word? The main purpose of the study of word recognition is making a model based on empirical phenomena. There are numerous models, and the criterion of a good model depends on the degree of its explaining power about the empirical phenomena. One of the main issues in making a model is whether the phonological components in a word mediate the access to the meaning of a word when a reader processes a printed word. Of course, the orthographic input is necessary to convert letters into the phonological form of the word. The point is whether phonology mediates the access to the meaning or whether the initial orthographic input is directly associated with the meaning.