The involvement of letter names in the silent processing of isolated letters: A developmental perspective

This study was designed to clarify the nature of the mental representations underlying the processing of letters. A total of 96 Hebrew readers randomly recruited from three levels of education were asked to make rapid same/different judgments for Hebrew letter dyads with monosyllabic and bisyllabic names. The results obtained from the performance of participants under perceptual and conceptual processing conditions suggest that Hebrew readers access nominal letter representations in order to mediate letter processing in tasks that cannot be resolved on the basis of a sheer perceptual analysis of the letters’ visual properties. The finding that the retrieval of nominal letter representations was evident for participants who differed rather markedly in their letter-processing speeds highlights the central role of letter names in the processing of isolated letters.