The Effects of Articulatory Suppression on Reading Ideographic and Alphabetic Numbers

The present experiments investigated the effects of articulatory suppression on reading numbers written alphabetically (one, two, etc.) or as Arabic numerals (1, 2, etc.). For alphabetic numbers, but not for numerals, a phonological representation can be generated and used for lexical access. If such phonological encoding occurs, and if it is harmed by irrelevant articulatory activity, then articulatory suppression should have a greater effect on the reading of alphabetic than on numeral representations of numbers. In contrast to a finding reported by Baron (1977), involving alphabetic and Roman numerals, in two experiments suppression was found to have essentially equivalent effects on the reading of both types of numbers. A third experiment explored a possible explanation for these discrepant findings. It is concluded that although alphabetic and numeral representations of numbers may be processed differently there is no evidence to support the idea that reading alphabetic numbers involves phonological encoding prior to lexical access.