ABSTRACT
This paper will attempt to provide a review, as simple and straightforward as possible given their complexities, of current conceptions about phonological processes in reading. Not surprisingly, the review will be organised around the twin questions of how orthography is translated to phonology when people read aloud and whether orthography is translated to phonology when people read silently.
Consideration of alternative theoretical conceptions, especially with respect to the first of these issues, will concentrate mainly on areas of agreement between them. It appears (see various commentaries on Humphreys & Evett, 1985) that what were once considered genuinely contrasting, opposing views (“dual-routine” and “analogy” models) are becoming difficult to distinguish. A character in a novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard comments that when his servant went into a sulk, the champagne and the bathwater became precisely the same uninviting temperature. Without specifying which (of analogy and dual-routine models) is the champagne and which the bathwater, the review will suggest that the temperatures of these two approaches are indeed now rather similar.
Perhaps as a natural reaction against early beliefs in essential phonological mediation of written-word recognition, all phonological processes appear to be persona non grata in much recent thinking about reading. But we suggest that whilst it may be appropriate to dismiss phonological coding as a basis for word recognition in reading, phonological representations for recognised words may be activated automatically, even in silent fluent reading.
