The importance of phonological coding in visual word recognition: Further evidence from second-language processing

Silent word reading does not rely exclusively on orthographic information but involves the activation of the phonology of words, as is revealed by the phonological priming effect in the masked priming paradigm. Thus far, the phonological priming effect has been documented mainly in monolinguals and bilinguals recognizing words in their first language. We provide evidence that the effect is equally strong in second language processing, even for bilinguals who acquired the second language at the age of 10-12 years in a school setting. This finding suggests that phonological coding is not a mere by-product of the fact that beginning readers try to map an orthographic representation to an already well-established phonological representation.