Fully transparent orthography, yet lexical reading aloud: The lexicality effect in Italian

Abstract

This is the first study that reports the lexicality effect (i.e., words read better than nonwords) in Italian with fully transparent and methodologically well-controlled stimuli. We investigated how words and nonwords are read aloud in the Italian transparent orthography, in which there is an almost strict one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Contrary to the claim that in such orthography word naming is accomplished primarily by the nonlexical assembly route, we found that words were named faster than nonwords, regardless of their frequency (high or low) or the composition of the experimental list (pure vs. mixed blocks). These findings show that the lexical route is the main one used by readers even in a language with a transparent orthography.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by MIUR-FIRB Grant RBAU01LE9P to Cristina Burani. We thank Stefania Marcolini, Despina Paizi, and Pierluigi Zoccolotti for valuable discussions on a preceding version of the manuscript. Giovanni Pagliuca, Laura Barca, and Cristina Burani are members of the Marie Curie RTN ‘Language and Brain’ (European Commission, MRTN-CT-2004-512141).