An evaluation of the two-cycles model of phonology assembly

In nine lexical decision experiments we evaluated Berent and Perfetti's (1995) hypothesis that, in visual word recognition, consonants and vowels are derived in two consecutive cycles. A nonvisible prime of 14 ms duration within a sequence of mask, nonword prime, and word target provided the operational definition of the first cycle. Contrary to the hypothesis, within the first cycle pseudohomo-phones (e.g., KLIP-clip) primed better than nonwords that conveyed only consonant information (e.g., CLEP-clip), vowel-preserving primes (e.g., GLAME-glaze, BAK-bad) were as effective as consonant-preserving primes (e.g., GLEZE-glaze, BYD-bad), and vowel complexity seemed to matter. Discussion focused on the assembly of phonology and the immediacy and primacy of phonological codes. (C) 2000 Academic Press.