Spelling-sound consistency affects the naming of high-frequency words

A commonly held view is that spelling-sound consistency only affects the naming of low-frequency words. A series of experiments is presented which demonstrates that this view is wrong. High-frequency inconsistent words yielded longer naming latencies than matched consistent words in each experiment. Consistency effects were strongest when inconsistent words had neighborhood properties that have been shown to produce robust consistency effects in low-frequency words, that is, they had low-frequency friends and high-frequency enemies. No previous study of high-frequency words has used words of this type. The final study demonstrated that both word-body consistency and individual letter-sound consistencies affect naming latencies for high-frequency words. Accounts of the findings by connectionist and dual-route cascade (DRC) models are discussed. (C) 1997 Academic Press.