Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Because meaning is both the common outcome and the typical goal of language processing, including reading, semantic processes have received a privileged position, especially in cognitive science accounts that emphasize semantic, goal driven components in language. Even in accounts of written word identification, a "low-level" process, it is typical to assume that semantic outputs are achieved with optional contributions of phonology. Our goal here is to present evidence for an alternative perspective, one that gives phonology a central rather than a peripheral, optional role in word identification. W e first briefly discuss a writing system comparison that is important to this perspective. W e then summarize recent published and unpublished research that gives definition to our conclusion that phonology is a central and universal component of word reading.