The Development and Use of Mediated Word Identification

A MODEL of word identification was proposed and tested by examining the influence of orthographic redundancy, versatility, and letter-sound correspondences on the identification of both high and low frequency words by children and adults. Word recognition latencies for words that varied orthogonally on these dimensions were compared when the words were read in isolation and context. Results were consistent with the proposed model and indicated that mediated word processing frequently occurs in both context-free and contextual reading. The degree that letter-sound correspondences or visual orthographic patterns were involved in mediated processing was shown to vary between age levels of readers. Sensitivity to versatile letter combinations (ones that appear in many different words) was found to greatly speed word identification.