Vowel Mutability in Print in English and Spanish

Studies of vowel mutability have shown that it is easier to change a nonword (e.g., /tibl/) into a real word by changing a vowel (/tebl/) than by changing a consonant (/fibl/). All previous studies have used auditory materials, suggesting that the effect is a spoken language phenomenon. We conducted two studies with print materials, one in English and one in Spanish. Both showed clear vowel mutability effects, suggesting that vowel mutability is a more a general phenomenon. Vowel mutability is also shown to be one of many phenomena in which vowels and consonants show asymmetrical effects. Implications for models of auditory and visual word recognition are discussed.