Two orthographic lexicons – twice as good as one?

How do we read and spell words? One view suggests that there is one orthographic lexicon used to recognise written words and a separate orthographic lexicon used for producing words (writing, oral spelling). The prevailing view however is that we possess a single orthographic lexicon which is used to both recognise and spell words. In experiments designed to test these competing theories, good word recognition in the face of poor spelling has often been cited as evidence supporting the two lexicon model. One lexicon proponents argue that they can also account for this result, suggesting that an incomplete/degraded entry in a single orthographic lexicon might be sufficient to allow good word recognition despite being too impoverished to support accurate spelling performance. This talk summarises the findings from an experiment which are more problematic for the one orthographic lexicon theory to explain.