Reading: Speech and meaning processes

The present research investigates the role of speech recoding, particularly its relationship to meaning analysis during reading. Experiment I documents a speech processing conflict during reading that is not evident in an analogous listening task. Experiment II presents evidence against a simple divided attention explanation of this conflict effect. Experiment III demonstrates independent contributions of speech and meaning processes to memory for the passages just read. The results are related to three classes of reading models: top-down, bottom-up, and interactive processing views.