Variable Reliance on Phonological Information in Visual Word Recognition

Strong evidence was obtained that coding operations are variable and efficient during visual word recognition. Subjects were asked to make lexical judgments about words and nonwords when phonological recoding was either beneficial or detrimental to making their decisions. It was found that subjects utilized a phonological strategy where it was helpful and abandoned that strategy where it was a hindrance. The results are interpreted as providing support for a dual retrieval model of word recognition.