ABSTRACT
One of the most robust findings in the single word reading literature is that high frequency words are processed as a unitary whole. The cognitive process by which such words are read has proven to be relatively impervious to the disparate influences which can systematically affect reading of other word types, such as regularity and pronunciation consistency. This chapter presents evidence that the process by which high frequency words are read can be affected by a systematic manipulation of a sublexical feature of those words. It examines the role the sublexical feature of minimal bigram frequency. The chapter examines the effect the frequencies of two-letter pairs within letter strings on a lexical decision task. Authors hypothesized that words with high minimal bigram frequencies would bias the word reading system towards using subprocesses specialized for high frequency words.
