Orthographic complexity and word naming in Italian: Some words are more transparent than others.

Italian is a language with a transparent orthography in which printed words can be translated into the correct sequence of phonemes using a limited set of rules. The rules of letter-sound conversion are, however, simpler for some letters than others: the pronunciations of sequencies involving the letters c and g are determined by complex (i.e., context-sensitive) rules which depend upon the letters that follow them. Two experiments are reported in which Italian participants read aloud words containing simple or complex letter-sound conversion rules. Experiment 1 found that words containing complex rules are read more slowly than words containing simple, non-contextual rules. Experiment 2 showed that the effect of rule complexity on naming speed held for low but not high frequency words. The results are interpreted in terms of a dual-route model in which rule complexity effects arise from sublexical procedures which are more involved in reading low than high frequency words.