The role of phonology in incidental vocabulary acquisition during silent reading

In two experiments, we investigated the role of phonology in learning new words incidentally during silent reading. Participants read sentence pairs containing novel or known words that varied in homophony (whether another word exists with an alternate spelling for the same pronunciation). In Experiment 1, we monitored readers' eye movements to investigate online processes involved in establishing meanings for novel words. In Experiment 2, participants completed cued recall and vocabulary recognition tasks after the reading session to assess the influence of phonological form on word learning. Eye movement results indicate that readers spent the most time reading novel homophones (e.g., skwosh) and surrounding context, indicating that phonological information is activated early during a reader's initial encounter with a new letter string. Retention measures suggest that readers were able to infer a meaning for each novel word type, despite the increased difficulty associated with reading novel words with familiar phonological forms, and that phonology aided the acquisition of orthography.