Phonology contributes to writing: evidence from written word production in a nonalphabetic script.

Is the production of written words affected by their phonological properties? Most researchers agree that orthographic codes can be accessed directly from meaning, but the contribution of phonological codes to written word production remains controversial, mainly because studies have focused on languages with alphabetic scripts, and it is difficult to dissociate sound from spelling in such languages. We report results from a picture-word interference task in which Chinese participants wrote the names of pictures while attempting to ignore written distractor words. On some trials, the distractors were phonologically and orthographically related to the picture names; on other trials, the distractors were only phonologically related to the picture names; and on still other trials, the distractors and picture names were unrelated. Priming effects were found for both types of related distractors relative to unrelated distractors. This result constitutes clear evidence that phonological properties constrain orthographic output. Additionally, the results speak to the nature of Chinese orthography, suggesting subsemantic correspondences between sound and spelling.