The syllable's role in word naming

Facilitation effect of token syllable frequency in Chinese spoken word production

Syllable frequency effects in spoken word production have been interpreted as evidence that speakers store syllable-sized motor programmes for phonetic encoding in alphabetic languages such as English or Dutch. However, the cognitive mechanism underlying the syllable frequency effect in Chinese spoken word production remains unknown. To investigate the locus of the syllable frequency effect in spoken Chinese, this study used a picture-word interference (PWI) task in which participants were asked to name the picture while ignoring the distractor word. The design included two variables: the syllable frequency of the target words (high vs. low) and the phonological relationships between distractor and target words (shared atonic syllable or not; related vs. unrelated). We manipulated mixed token and type syllable frequency in Experiment 1, and token syllable frequency but controlled type syllable frequency in Experiment 2. The results showed a facilitation effect of mixed syllable frequency and a similar facilitation effect of token syllable frequency. Importantly, the syllable frequency effect was found to be independent of the phonological facilitation effect. These results suggest that token syllable frequency played a dominant role in the observed facilitation effect, providing evidence that the syllable frequency effect arises in the phonetic encoding of Chinese spoken word production.

The role of syllables and morphemes in silent reading: An eye-tracking study

German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. This study aimed to unveil which of these sublexical units are the preferred units of reading by employing eye-tracking technology. Participants silently read sentences while their eye-movements were recorded. Words were visually marked using colour alternation (Experiment 1) or hyphenation (Experiment 2)-at syllable boundary (e.g., Kir-schen), at morpheme boundary (e.g., Kirsch-en), or within the units themselves (e.g., Ki-rschen). A control condition without disruptions was used as a baseline (e.g., Kirschen). The results of Experiment 1 showed that eye-movements were not modulated by colour alternations. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that hyphens disrupting syllables had a larger inhibitory effect on reading times than hyphens disrupting morphemes, suggesting that eye-movements in German skilled readers are more influenced by syllabic than morphological structure.

Spoken-word production in Korean: A non-word masked priming and phonological Stroop task investigation

Speech production studies have shown that phonological unit initially used to fill the metrical frame during phonological encoding is language specific, that is, a phoneme for English and Dutch, an atonal syllable for Mandarin Chinese, and a mora for Japanese. However, only a few studies chronometrically investigated speech production in Korean, and they obtained mixed results. Korean is particularly interesting as there might be both phonemic and syllabic influences during phonological encoding. The purpose of this study is to further examine the initial phonological preparation unit in Korean, employing a masked priming task (Experiment 1) and a phonological Stroop task (Experiment 2). The results showed that significant onset (and onset-plus, that is, consonant-vowel [CV]) effects were found in both experiments, but there was no compelling evidence for a prominent role for the syllable. When the prime words were presented in three different forms related to the targets, namely, without any change, with re-syllabified codas, and with nasalised codas, there were no significant differences in facilitation among the three forms. Alternatively, it is also possible that participants may not have had sufficient time to process the primes up to the point that re-syllabification or nasalisation could have been carried out. In addition, the results of a Stroop task demonstrated that the onset phoneme effect was not driven by any orthographic influence. These findings suggest that the onset segment and not the syllable is the initial (or proximate) phonological unit used in the segment-to-frame encoding process during speech planning in Korean.

L2 Word Recognition: Influence of L1 Orthography on Multi-syllabic Word Recognition

L2 reading research suggests that L1 orthographic experience influences L2 word recognition. Nevertheless, the findings on multi-syllabic words in English are still limited despite the fact that a vast majority of words are multi-syllabic. The study investigated whether L1 orthography influences the recognition of multi-syllabic words, focusing on the position of an embedded word. The participants were Arabic ESL learners, Chinese ESL learners, and native speakers of English. The task was a word search task, in which the participants identified a target word embedded in a pseudoword at the initial, middle, or final position. The search accuracy and speed indicated that all groups showed a strong preference for the initial position. The accuracy data further indicated group differences. The Arabic group showed higher accuracy in the final than middle, while the Chinese group showed the opposite and the native speakers showed no difference between the two positions. The findings suggest that L2 multi-syllabic word recognition involves unique processes.

The primacy of abstract syllables in Chinese word production

Convergent evidence suggests that syllables play a primary and distinctive role in the phonological phase of Mandarin Chinese word production. Specifically, syllables are selected before other phonological components and guide subsyllabic encoding. The proximity of phonological syllables to word representations in Chinese languages ensures that they are also activated automatically by word perception. Therefore, in contrast to Indo-European languages, syllables but not necessarily subsyllabic components such as initial consonants can be perceptually primed in production. We tested this prediction in 2 masked-priming experiments. To isolate relevant phonological activation originating in primes, we used single character masked primes whose corresponding tones and lexical meanings always differed from those of the targets' first morphemes. Related primes potentially activated the atonal first syllables or the first consonants of target words. To strongly engage production-specific processes, we used pictures as prompts for disyllabic target words. Facilitation relative to unrelated controls was observed only in the syllable sharing condition. If anything, sharing of initial consonants had a negative valence, perhaps indicative of competition among similar coactivated words or syllables. These findings corroborate the view that abstract syllables are the first selected, proximate phonological units in Chinese word production, and that phonemic segments play a subordinate role. (PsycINFO Database Record

The role of syllables in sign language production

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional role of syllables in sign language and how the different phonological combinations influence sign production. Moreover, the influence of age of acquisition was evaluated. Deaf signers (native and non-native) of Catalan Signed Language (LSC) were asked in a picture-sign interference task to sign picture names while ignoring distractor-signs with which they shared two phonological parameters (out of three of the main sign parameters: Location, Movement, and Handshape). The results revealed a different impact of the three phonological combinations. While no effect was observed for the phonological combination Handshape-Location, the combination Handshape-Movement slowed down signing latencies, but only in the non-native group. A facilitatory effect was observed for both groups when pictures and distractors shared Location-Movement. Importantly, linguistic models have considered this phonological combination to be a privileged unit in the composition of signs, as syllables are in spoken languages. Thus, our results support the functional role of syllable units during phonological articulation in sign language production.

Second language phonology influences first language word naming

The Masked Onset Priming Effect (MOPE) has been reported in speakers' first languages (L1). The aims of the present study are to investigate whether second language (L2) phonology is active during L1 reading, and to disentangle the contributions of orthography and phonology in reading aloud. To this end, Dutch-English bilinguals read aloud L1 target words primed by L2 words, while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The onset of the primes was manipulated to disentangle the contributions of orthography and phonology (i.e. O+P+: kite - KUNST, 'art'; O+P-: knee - KUNST; O-P+: crime - KUNST; O-P-: mine - KUNST). Phonological but not orthographic overlap facilitated RTs. However, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed both orthographic and phonological priming starting 125 ms after target presentation. Taken together, we gained insights into the time course of cross-linguistic priming and demonstrated that L2 phonology is activated rapidly in an L1 environment.

Syllabic pseudohomophone priming in tip-of-the-tongue states resolution: The role of syllabic position and number of syllables

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is a common experience, usually coupled with a frustrating feeling caused by the incapability of retrieving a familiar word. It is thought that TOTs occur when the semantic and syntactic information of the word is retrieved but not its phonology. This study aims to further understand the role of phonology in TOT resolution. Specifically, using a syllabic pseudohomophone priming paradigm, we aim to analyse the role of the phonological syllabic position (first vs. last) and the number of syllables in TOT states resolution. TOT was elicited by a picture naming task, after which a lexical decision task was presented. Here, first, last, or none of the phonological syllables of the target word were embedded in pseudohomophone primes. Results showed a significant syllabic pseudohomophone priming effect facilitating TOT resolution. The effect was stronger for four-syllable words, especially when the last syllable was used as prime. These results seem to reinforce the importance of phonology in TOT states resolution, particularly the role of the syllable as an important sublexical unit in speech processing.

Masked syllable priming effects in word and picture naming in Chinese

Four experiments investigated the role of the syllable in Chinese spoken word production. Chen, Chen and Ferrand (2003) reported a syllable priming effect when primes and targets shared the first syllable using a masked priming paradigm in Chinese. Our Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Chen et al.’s (2003) Experiment 3 employing CV (e.g., 拔营,/ba2.ying2/, strike camp) and CVG (e.g., 白首,/bai2.shou3/, white haired) syllable types. Experiment 2 tested the syllable priming effect using different syllable types: e.g., CV (气球,/qi4.qiu2/, balloon) and CVN (蜻蜓,/qing1.ting2/, dragonfly). Experiment 3 investigated this issue further using line drawings of common objects as targets that were preceded either by a CV (e.g., 企,/qi3/, attempt), or a CVN (e.g., 情,/qing2/, affection) prime. Experiment 4 further examined the priming effect by a comparison between CV or CVN priming and an unrelated priming condition using CV-NX (e.g., 迷你,/mi2.ni3/, mini) and CVN-CX (e.g., 民居,/min2.ju1/, dwellings) as target words. These four experiments consistently found that CV targets were named faster when preceded by CV primes than when they were preceded by CVG, CVN or unrelated primes, whereas CVG or CVN targets showed the reverse pattern. These results indicate that the priming effect critically depends on the match between the structure of the prime and that of the first syllable of the target. The effect obtained in this study was consistent across different stimuli and different tasks (word and picture naming), and provides more conclusive and consistent data regarding the role of the syllable in Chinese speech production.

The interaction of subsyllabic encoding and stress assignment: A new examination of an old problem in Spanish

This study employs a naming task to examine the role of the syllable in speech production, focusing on a lesser-studied aspect of syllabic processing, the interaction of subsyllabic patterns (i.e. syllable phonotactics) and higher-level prosody, in this case, stress assignment in Spanish. Specifically, we examine a controversial debate in Spanish regarding the interaction of syllable weight and stress placement, showing that traditional representations of weight fail to predict the differential modulation of stress placement by rising versus falling diphthongs in Spanish nonce forms. Our results also suggest that the internal structure of the syllable plays a larger role than is assumed in the processing literature in that it modulates higher-level processes such as stress encoding. Our results thus inform the debate regarding syllable weight in Spanish and linguistic theorizing more broadly, as well as expand our understanding of the importance of the syllable, and more specifically its internal structure, in modulating word processing.

The syllable effect in anagram solution: unrecognised evidence from past studies

Six previous studies of the variables affecting anagram solution are re-examined for the evidence that number of syllables contributes to solution difficulty. It was shown that the number of syllables in a solution word was confounded with imagery for one study and with diagram frequency for another. More importantly it was shown that the number of syllables has a large effect on anagram solution difficulty in the re-analysis of the results from the other four studies. In these studies, the number of syllables was either more important than the principal variable examined in the experiment or the second most important variable. Overall the effect size for the number of syllables was large, d = 1.14. The results are discussed in the light of other research and it is suggested that anagram solution may have more in common with other word identification and reading processes than has been previously thought.

InfoSyll: a syllabary providing statistical information on phonological and orthographic syllables

There is now a growing body of evidence in various languages supporting the claim that syllables are functional units of visual word processing. In the perspective of modeling the processing of polysyllabic words and the activation of syllables, current studies investigate syllabic effects with subtle manipulations. We present here a syllabary of the French language aiming at answering new constraints when designing experiments on the syllable issue. The InfoSyll syllabary provides exhaustive characteristics and statistical information for each phonological syllable (e.g., /fi/) and for its corresponding orthographic syllables (e.g., fi, phi, phy, fee, fix, fis). Variables such as the type and token positional frequencies, the number and frequencies of the correspondences between orthographic and phonological syllables are provided. As discussed, such computations should allow precise controls, manipulations and quantitative descriptions of syllabic variables in the field of psycholinguistic research.

Does Kaniso activate CASINO?: input coding schemes and phonology in visual-word recognition

Most recent input coding schemes in visual-word recognition assume that letter position coding is orthographic rather than phonological in nature (e.g., SOLAR, open-bigram, SERIOL, and overlap). This assumption has been drawn - in part - by the fact that the transposed-letter effect (e.g., caniso activates CASINO) seems to be (mostly) insensitive to phonological manipulations (e.g., Perea & Carreiras, 2006, 2008; Perea & Pérez, 2009). However, one could argue that the lack of a phonological effect in prior research was due to the fact that the manipulation always occurred in internal letter positions - note that phonological effects tend to be stronger for the initial syllable (Carreiras, Ferrand, Grainger, & Perea, 2005). To reexamine this issue, we conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which we compared the priming effect for transposed-letter pairs (e.g., caniso-CASINO vs. caviro-CASINO) and for pseudohomophone transposed-letter pairs (kaniso-CASINO vs. kaviro-CASINO). Results showed a transposed-letter priming effect for the correctly spelled pairs, but not for the pseudohomophone pairs. This is consistent with the view that letter position coding is (primarily) orthographic in nature.

The French Lexicon Project: lexical decision data for 38,840 French words and 38,840 pseudowords

The French Lexicon Project involved the collection of lexical decision data for 38,840 French words and the same number of nonwords. It was directly inspired by the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) and produced very comparable frequency and word length effects. The present article describes the methods used to collect the data, reports analyses on the word frequency and the word length effects, and describes the Excel files that make the data freely available for research purposes. The word and pseudoword data from this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

SYLLABARIUM: an online application for deriving complete statistics for Basque and Spanish orthographic syllables

The present article introduces SYLLABARIUM, a new Web tool addressing the needs of linguists, psycholinguists, and cognitive scientists who work with Spanish and/or Basque and are interested in retrieving information about several syllable-related parameters. This new online syllabic database allows the user to generate complete lists of Spanish and Basque syllables with information about the syllable frequency. Among other measures, for a given orthographic syllable, SYLLABARIUM provides its number of occurrences (i.e., the type frequency), the summed lexical frequency of the words that contain this syllable (i.e., the token frequency), and the positional distribution of type and token frequencies. The cross-language feature of SYLLABARIUM is of special interest to researchers aiming to explore the influence of the syllable in bilingualism. The Web tool is available at www.bcbl.eu/syllabarium.

Early perception of written syllables in French: An event-related potential study

The present study examined whether written syllable units are perceived in first steps of letter string processing. An illusory conjunction experiment was conducted while event-related potentials were recorded. Colored pseudowords were presented such that there was a match or mismatch between the syllable boundaries and the color boundaries. The results showed that congruent stimuli for which the syllable and color boundaries coincided produced a greater positive-going waveform than incongruent stimuli for which the syllable and color boundaries did not coincide. This syllable-color congruency effect was observed to occur both prior to 100 ms, and in a time window commencing at 150 ms. This finding suggests that syllable units are perceived in the initial steps of French visual word processing. Moreover, this study underlines the specificity of the illusory conjunction paradigm as a relevant and powerful tool of investigation of sublexical units that are automatically evoked from word perception.

Japanese mental syllabary and effects of mora, syllable, bi-mora and word frequencies on Japanese speech production

The present study investigated the existence of a Japanese mental syllabary and units stored therein for speech production. Experiment 1 compared naming latencies between high and low initial mora frequencies using CVCVCV nonwords, indicating that nonwords with a high initial mora frequency were named faster than those with a low frequency initial mora. Experiments 2 and 3 clarified the possibility of CV light and CVN/CVR heavy syllables as being units implicated in speech production. CVNCV nonwords in Experiment 2 and CVRCV nonwords in Experiment 3 displayed shorter naming latencies and lower error rates than their baseline (same bi-mora frequencies) of CVCVCV-structured nonwords. Since bi-mora frequencies between CVN/CVR and CVCV were the same, heavy syllables comprised of CVN and CVR units may contribute to ready-made motor-programs stored in the Japanese mental syllabary as variations of the 100 core light syllables (300 units in total). Experiment 4 further tested the effects of bi-mora frequency on the naming of nonwords, and found that CVCVCV-structured nonwords with high bi-mora frequencies were named more quickly and accurately than those with low bi-mora frequencies, although some bi-mora combinations seem to exhibit nonconforming tendencies (i.e., null significance in item analysis). Experiment 5 demonstrated that the naming of real words with high word frequency was quicker than for other real word conditions with low word frequencies (i.e., word frequency effects), with little effect of bi-mora frequencies. Unlike the nonword condition of Experiment 4, bi-mora frequency had only a minor influence on the naming of real words. Based on these findings, the present study proposes a possible model of the Japanese mental syllabary accompanied by a discussion of bi-mora and word frequency effects.

Skilled readers begin processing sub-phonemic features by 80 ms during visual word recognition: evidence from ERPs

Two masked priming experiments investigated the time-course of the activation of sub-phonemic information during visual word recognition. EEG was recorded as participants read targets with voiced and unvoiced final consonants (e.g., fad and fat), preceded by nonword primes that were incongruent or congruent in voicing and vowel duration (e.g., fap or faz). Experiment 1 used a long duration mask (100 ms) between prime and target, whereas Experiment 2 used a short mask (22 ms). Phonological feature congruency began modulating the amplitude of brain potentials by 80 ms; the feature incongruent condition evoked greater negativity than the feature congruent condition in both experiments. The early onset of the congruency effect indicates that skilled readers initially activate sub-phonemic feature information during word identification. Congruency effects also appeared in the middle and late periods of word recognition, suggesting that readers use phonological representations in multiple aspects of visual word recognition.

The effect of phonological structure on visual word access in bilinguals

Two experiments examined if visual word access varies cross-linguistically by studying Spanish/English adult bilinguals, priming two syllable CVCV words both within (Experiment 1) and across (Experiment 2) syllable boundaries in the two languages. Spanish readers accessed more first syllables based on within syllable primes compared to English readers. In contrast, syllable-based primes helped English readers recognize more words than in Spanish, suggesting that experienced English readers activate a larger unit in the initial stages of word recognition. Primes spanning the syllable boundary affected readers of both languages in similar ways. In this priming context, primes that did not span the syllable boundary helped Spanish readers recognize more syllables, while English readers identified more words, further confirming the importance of the syllable in Spanish and suggesting a larger unit in English. Overall, the experiments provide evidence that readers use different units in accessing words in the two languages.

Lexical and post-lexical phonological representations in spoken production

Theories of spoken word production generally assume a distinction between at least two types of phonological processes and representations: lexical phonological processes that recover relatively arbitrary aspects of word forms from long-term memory and post-lexical phonological processes that specify the predictable aspects of phonological representations. In this work we examine the spoken production of two brain-damaged individuals. We use their differential patterns of accuracy across the tasks of spoken naming and repetition to establish that they suffer from distinct deficits originating fairly selectively within lexical or post-lexical processes. Independent and detailed analyses of their spoken productions reveal contrasting patterns that provide clear support for a distinction between two types of phonological representations: those that lack syllabic and featural information and are sensitive to lexical factors such as lexical frequency and neighborhood density, and those that include syllabic and featural information and are sensitive to detailed properties of phonological structure such as phoneme frequency and syllabic constituency.

Syllabic Priming Effects in Picture Naming in French

Ferrand, Segui, and Grainger (1996 ) found robust syllable priming effects in picture naming latencies: Pictures primed with their initial syllable (e.g., ba for baleine [whale]) were processed faster than pictures primed with a string of letters shorter or longer than their initial syllable (e.g., bal for baleine). However, in several studies, these priming effects have not been replicated in word naming or in picture naming either in Dutch or in English ( Schiller, 1998 , 1999 , 2000 ). The present study was aimed at replicating syllable priming effects in picture naming in French using a masked priming paradigm. The study employed a larger number of participants and items than were used in the Ferrand et al. (1996 ) study. The syllable priming effect in picture naming latencies was not replicated. Subsampling procedures were then used to examine the stability of the Ferrand et al. (1996 ) pattern of results in picture naming in greater detail. The syllabic priming effect in picture naming turned out to be an extremely rare event.

Skeletal structure of printed words: evidence from the stroop task

Do readers encode the sequencing of consonant (C) and vowel (V) phonemes (skeletal structure) in printed words? The authors used the Stroop task to examine readers' sensitivity to skeletal structure. In Experiment 1, CVC nonwords (e.g., pof) facilitated the naming of colors with congruent frames (e.g., red, a CVC word) but not with incongruent ones (e.g., green). In Experiment 2, the color black (a CCVC frame) was named faster with a congruent CCVC frame (e.g., grof) compared to either CCVCC (e.g., groft) or CVC (e.g., gof) incongruent controls. Finally, in Experiment 3, the color pink (a CVCC frame) was named faster with a CVCC frame (e.g., goft) compared to either CCVCC or CVC incongruent controls. In most cases, congruent frames shared no segments with the color name. These findings demonstrate that readers automatically assemble the skeletal structure of printed words.

Monitoring syllable boundaries during speech production

This study investigated the encoding of syllable boundary information during speech production in Dutch. Based on Levelt's model of phonological encoding, we hypothesized segments and syllable boundaries to be encoded in an incremental way. In a self-monitoring experiment, decisions about the syllable affiliation (first or second syllable) of a pre-specified consonant, which was the third phoneme in a word, were required (e.g., ka. No 'canoe' vs. kaN.sel 'pulpit'; capital letters indicate pivotal consonants, dots mark syllable boundaries). First syllable responses were faster than second syllable responses, indicating the incremental nature of segmental encoding and syllabification during speech production planning. The results of the experiment are discussed in the context of Levelt's model of phonological encoding.

Naming pseudowords in Spanish: effects of syllable frequency

Three naming experiments were conducted to examine the role of the first and the second syllable during speech production in Spanish. Facilitative effects of syllable frequency with disyllabic words have been reported in Dutch and Spanish (Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994; Perea & Carreiras, 1998). In both cases, the syllable frequency effect was independent of-and additive to-the effect of word frequency. However, Levelt and Wheeldon (1994) found that words ending in a high-frequency syllable were named faster than words ending in a low-frequency syllable, whereas Perea and Carreiras (1998) found a facilitative effect of syllable frequency for the initial syllable. In Experiments 1-2, we manipulated the frequency of the first and the second syllable of disyllabic CV.CV pseudowords. In Experiment 3, participants named CVC disyllabic pseudowords for which only the frequency of the first syllable was manipulated. The experiments showed a facilitative effect of frequency of the first syllable. The findings are discussed in terms of the current models of speech production.

Tracking the time course of phonological encoding in speech production: an event-related brain potential study

This study investigated the time course of phonological encoding during speech production planning. Previous research has shown that conceptual/semantic information precedes syntactic information in the planning of speech production and that syntactic information is available earlier than phonological information. Here, we studied the relative time courses of the two different processes within phonological encoding, i.e. metrical encoding and syllabification. According to one prominent theory of language production, metrical encoding involves the retrieval of the stress pattern of a word, while syllabification is carried out to construct the syllabic structure of a word. However, the relative timing of these two processes is underspecified in the theory. We employed an implicit picture naming task and recorded event-related brain potentials to obtain fine-grained temporal information about metrical encoding and syllabification. Results revealed that both tasks generated effects that fall within the time window of phonological encoding. However, there was no timing difference between the two effects, suggesting that they occur approximately at the same time.

Reaction time analysis of two types of motor preparation for speech articulation: action as a sequence of chunks

Reaction time (RT) prior to speech articulation increased as a function of response complexity. The RT findings formed 2 patterns, each of which was a different Response Complexity x Paradigm (choice RT vs. simple RT) interaction. That result extends previous findings from manual button-pressing tasks (S. T. Klapp, 1995) to a different action modality. Two different types of response programming, INT and SEQ, are assumed in the interpretation. Whereas INT can be identified with response programming within a word, SEQ fits a different interpretation related to timing of onsets of speech units. A critical assumption is that a long response is represented as a sequence of chunks; that organization is subject to manipulation. New findings suggest some modifications of the previous theory.

Syllables as units in speech production: Data from aphasia

The syllable has received considerable empirical support as a unit of processing in speech perception, but its status in speech production remains unclear. Some researchers propose that syllables are individually represented and retrieved during phonological encoding (e.g., Dell, 1986; Ferrand, Segui, & Grainger, 1996; MacKay, 1987). We test this hypothesis by examining the influence of syllable frequency on the phonological errors of two aphasics. These individuals both had an impairment in phonological encoding, but appeared to differ in the precise locus of that impairment. They each read aloud and repeated 110 pairs of words matched for syllabic complexity, but differing in final syllable frequency. Lexical frequency was also controlled. Neither aphasic was more error-prone on low than on high frequency syllables (indeed, one showed a near-significant reverse effect), and neither showed a preference for more frequent syllables in their errors. These findings provide no support for the view that syllables are individually represented and accessed during phonological encoding.

The effect of shared structure and content on reading nonwords: evidence for a CV skeleton

Four experiments examined the effect of shared skeletal structure versus content overlap on naming printed nonwords. Experiments 1-2 compared priming among nonwords sharing either skeletal structure and content (e.g., dus-DUS) or structure alone (e.g., pid-BAF) with controls that differed from the target in the number of skeleton slots (e.g., pid-BAF vs. plid-BAF). Conversely, in Experiments 3-4, same-versus different-structure primes contrasted only in the ordering of CV skeletal slots (e.g., fap-DUS vs. ift-DUS). Priming effects were modulated by shared content and skeletal similarity. The sensitivity of skeletal priming to the abstract arrangement of consonants and vowels suggests that skeletal representations assign distinct slots for consonants and vowels. Readers' sensitivity to skeletal structure in nonword identification indicates that assembled phonological representations are constrained by linguistic knowledge.

Priming effects from phonologically related distractors in picture-word interference

In the cross-modal picture-word interference task, distractors phonologically related to a to-be-named picture facilitate the naming response as compared to unrelated distractors. Our experiment shows that this phonological priming effect can be obtained with as early an SOA as -300 ms. The experiment also demonstrates that this priming effect cannot be attributed to strategic behaviour of the participants as opposed to automatic preactivation processes in the lexical-conceptual system. The implications for studies using the picture-word interference task as a tool for investigating lexicalization processes in speech production are discussed.

Reading aloud polysyllabic words and nonwords: the syllabic length effect reexamined

Two experiments were run in order to reinvestigate the role of the number of syllables in naming. Experiment 1 (word naming) showed that effects of number of syllables on naming latency were observed for very low-frequency words but not for high-frequency words (thus replicating Jared & Seidenberg's, 1990, finding). In Experiment 2 (nonword naming), syllabic length effects were also obtained for nonwords. Control experiments found no effect on the latency of delayed naming of the same words and nonwords. These results suggest that naming does require syllabic decomposition, at least for very low-frequency words and nonwords in French. In particular, these data are compatible with any model of reading that postulates that reading aloud depends on the activity of two procedures: (1) a procedure that operates in parallel across a letter string (and does not generate a strong syllabic length effect) and that is the predominant process in generating responses to high-frequency words, and (2) another procedure that operates serially across a letter string (and generates a strong syllabic length effect) and that is the predominant process in generating responses to very low-frequency words and nonwords. These results are discussed in the context of the multiple-trace memory model for polysyllabic word naming (Ans, Carbonnel, & Valdois, 1998).

Masked syllable priming of English nouns

This study investigates the role of sublexical units in the phonological encoding of English single-word production in a word-naming task (Experiment 1) and a picture-naming task (Experiment 2). Targets corresponded to bisyllabic English nouns with word-initial stress which varied on the structure of their first syllable: CV (e.g., pi.lot), CVC (e.g., pic.nic), or CV[C] (e. g., pi[ll]ow).1 Targets were preceded by a visually masked prime that either matched their first syllable (e.g., pi%%% - pi.lot) or that was one segment longer (e.g., pil%% - pi.lot) or shorter (e.g., pi%%%% - pic.nic) than the first syllable. Response times were compared to a neutral control condition (e.g., %&$%% - pi.lot) to measure the priming effects (either facilitation or inhibition). Results showed significant facilitation for both the CV and the CVC conditions. However, contrary to previous findings, there was no interaction between the syllabic structure of the prime and the target.

A phoneme effect in visual word recognition

In alphabetic writing systems like English or French, many words are composed of more letters than phonemes (e.g. BEACH is composed of five letters and three phonemes, i.e./biJ/). This is due to the presence of higher order graphemes, that is, groups of letters that map into a single phoneme (e.g. EA and CH in BEACH map into the single phonemes /i/ and /J/, respectively). The present study investigated the potential role of these subsyllabic components for the visual recognition of words in a perceptual identification task. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the number of phonemes in monosyllabic, low frequency, five-letter, English words, and found that identification times were longer for words with a small number of phonemes than for words with a large number of phonemes. In Experiment 2, this 'phoneme effect' was replicated in French for low frequency, but not for high frequency, monosyllabic words. These results suggest that subsyllabic components, also referred to as functional orthographic units, play a crucial role as elementary building blocks of visual word recognition.