Shallow versus deep footprints in pseudo-word grapheme-to-phoneme conversion: Dutch and English

Our study is concerned with reading processes. Using a letter-detection paradigm with masked priming, we tested for the existence and time course of vowel digraph effects in Dutch and English. Whereas Dutch readers showed digraph effects with 67-ms primes, English readers showed only letter effects at 67 ms and merely a weak digraph trend at 83 ms. These findings are consistent with the PSYCHOLOGICAL GRAIN SIZE THEORY, a model of reading development that predicts that grapheme-phoneme conversion proceeds faster in shallow than in deep orthographies. This also demonstrates that similar language structures can be processed differently if they are modulated by different inter-faces, in this case, orthography.