ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to examine one of the most intriguing claims that has been made during the past decade of research in single-word reading-the idea that feedback consistency influences fluent adults’ performance. It has been reported in several studies (Lacruz & Folk, 2004; Perry, 2003; Stone, Vanhoy, & Van Orden, 1997; Ziegler, Montant, & Jacobs, 1997) that adults are slowed when reading a word like hurl because other words that hurl rhymes with, such as girl and pearl, have different spellings of the same rhyme. This effect is surprising, because inconsistency in the sound-to-letter direction, something that might logically make writing difficult, would seem to play no necessary role in reading, which involves mapping letters to sounds. We begin this chapter by reviewing the literature on the feedback consistency effect, pointing out some methodological problems in several of the studies that have argued for its existence. We then report new analyses designed to determine whether feedback consistency has a reliable effect on the speed with which people read individual words.
