The sublexical conversion procedure in spelling to dictation

Our study was aimed at investigating the phoneme-to-grapheme conversion procedure involved in spelling to dictation in adults. According to one hypothesis, only the most frequent phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence comes into play in the conversion process. Aocording to another hypothesis, the different phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences, which are available for a given phoneme, are simultaneously activated and are in competition (Barry & Seymour, 1988). Adults had to write down from dictation words which were either inconsistent or consistent. Among the inconsistent words sharing the same rime (e.g., the French words blond, plomb), the rime had either a dominant orthographic rendering ("-ond"), or a subdominant orthographic rendering ("-omb"). The subdominant words were initialized less rapidely than the dominant ones, and the latter two types of words were initialized less rapidely than consistent words (e.g., plume). The findings are consistent with the hypothesis according to which the different phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences which are available for a given phoneme are simultaneously activated and are in competition in spelling to dictation.