The use of phonemic information to solve anagrams

Abstract

Two studies investigated the role of phonemic information in anagram solving. In the first study, subjects were given bigram clues to beginnings of solution words. In addition, some subjects pronounced the letters, either correctly or incorrectly with respect to their pronun-ciations in the solution words. Correct pronunciations facilitated and incorrect pronunciations inhibited anagram solving. The second study required subjects to repeat the pronunciation of the entire anagram prior to attempting solution. Again, correct pronunciations were solved more quickly than were anagrams containing incorrect phonemic units. Results of the two studies support an analysis of anagram solving in which both orthographic and phonemic information are used to search memory to retrieve possible solution words. The relationship of the present results to recent research concerning reading and other lexical access tasks is discussed. © 1981 Psychonomic Society, Inc.