Do readers access featural phonetic information when reading silently or out loud? An examination of the use of vowel length as a pre-phonemic featural property

The following study examines eye movements during sentence reading when targets were embedded in a sentence and varied on word frequency and spoken vowel duration. Two experiments were implemented to examine possible differences in eye movements when reading silently (Experiment 1) and when reading out loud (Experiment 2). Findings indicate that differences in word frequency had a localized effect on target reading time when reading both silently and out loud. Differences in spoken vowel duration, however, produced asymmetrical patterns of results. During silent reading there was a difference in viewing time on the pre-target and target word. When reading out loud, however, the target word effect was delayed until post-target word viewing. These results support the use of pre-phonological information on early word processing in addition to the generation of a sub-vocal speech stream and overt speech signal.