Orthography, phonology, short-term memory and the effects of concurrent articulation on rhyme and homophony judgements

The role of phonological short-term memory (pSTM) in phonological judgement tasks of print has been widely explored using concurrent articulation (CA). A number of studies have examined the effects of CA on written word/nonword rhyme and homophone judgements but the findings have been mixed and few studies have examined both tasks within subjects. Also important is the influence of orthographic similarity on such tasks (i.e., items that share phonology often strongly overlap on orthography). Although there are reports of orthographic similarity effects (e.g., LOAD-TOAD vs. DIAL-MILE) on rhyme judgements, it is unknown whether (a) similar orthographic effects are present with homophone judgements, (b) the degree to which such orthographic effects interact with CA, and (c) the degree to which such orthographic effects interact with lexical status (words vs. nonwords). The present work re-examines these three issues in a within subject design. CA and orthographic similarity yielded subtle differences across tasks. CA impaired accuracy for both homophone and rhyme judgement, but only slowed RTs on the rhyme judgement task, and then only for words. Orthographic similarity yielded an increase in false positives for similar items and vice versa for dissimilar items, suggesting a general impact of an orthographically based ‘bias’ in choosing similar or dissimilar sounding items. This pattern was amplified under CA but only on the homophone judgement task. These results highlight important interactions between phonological and orthographic representations in phonological judgement tasks, and the findings are considered both with reference to earlier studies and several models of pSTM.