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Abstract
Children from grades 3, 5 and 7, and adults were given a lexical decision task to investigate the development of the use of a lexical access and storage code: the Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure (BOSS; Taft, 1979). This structure approximates the base morpheme of a word and comprises the initial vowel-plus-consonant unit of a word (e.g., RUD is the BOSS of RUDE, MAD the BOSS of MADE). Stimuli were letter-strings, equally divided into three word and three nonword conditions. BOSS was manipulated in word and nonword conditions and compared to words of same or higher frequency or nonwords. All nonword decisions took longer than word decisions, suggesting an age-invariant exhaustive lexical search. Relatively larger word/nonword differences for younger children were attributed to different bases of lexical distinctions. The availability of a BOSS-based lexical file was apparent at all ages although utilization of a BOSS-mediated code seems to emerge gradually.