Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:29:47.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Syllable effects in beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese readers: Evidence from a sandwich masked go/no-go lexical decision task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Ana Duarte CAMPOS Open the ORCID record for Ana Duarte CAMPOS [Opens in a new window] ,
Helena Mendes OLIVEIRA  and
Ana Paula SOARES
Ana Duarte CAMPOS*
Affiliation:
Research Unit in Psycholinguistics, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Minho University, Braga, Portugal
Helena Mendes OLIVEIRA
Affiliation:
Research Unit in Psycholinguistics, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Minho University, Braga, Portugal
Ana Paula SOARES
Affiliation:
Research Unit in Psycholinguistics, CIPsi, School of Psychology, Minho University, Braga, Portugal
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Reading is one of the most important milestones a child achieves throughout development. Above the letter level, the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition in adult skilled readers. However, studies aiming to examine when, during reading acquisition, the syllable emerges as a functional sublexical unit are scarce, and the studies conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. In this work, beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese (EP) developing readers performed a sandwich masked lexical decision task in which CV (e.g., RU.MOR[rumour]) and CVC (e.g., CIS.NE[swan]) first-syllable EP words were preceded either by syllable congruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, cis.ra-CIS.NE), syllable incongruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, ci.ser-CIS.NE), unrelated (e.g., va.cra-RU.MOR, zar.vo-CIS.NE) pseudowords primes, or identity (e.g., ru.mour-RU.MOUR, cis.ne-CIS.NE) primes. Results showed reliable syllable effects only for intermediate readers and for CV and CVC words alike. Findings are discussed attending to current models of visual word recognition.

Keywords

Syllable effectsdeveloping readersvisual word recognitionmasked priming
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , July 2021 , pp. 699 - 716
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Álvarez, C. J., Carreiras, M., & Perea, M. (2004) Are syllables phonological units in visual word recognition? Language and Cognitive Processes, 19(3), 427–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Álvarez, C. J., Carreiras, M., & Taft, M. (2001). Syllables and morphemes: Contrasting Token Effects in Spanish. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Language, Memory and Cognition, 27(2), 545–555.Google Scholar
Álvarez, C. J., Carreiras, M., & de Vega, M. (2000). Syllable-frequency effect in visual word recognition: Evidence of sequential-type processing. Psicológica, 21, 341–374.Google Scholar
Álvarez, C. J., García-Saavedra, G., Luque, J. L., & Taft, M. (2017). Syllabic parsing in children: a developmental study using visual word-spotting in Spanish. Journal of Child Language, 44, 380–401.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ans, B., Carbonnel, S., & Valdois, S. (1998). A Connectionist Multiple-Trace Memory Model for Polysyllabic Word Reading. Psychological Review, 105(4), 678–723.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2014). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., & Bolker, B. (2011). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes (R package version 0.999375-39). Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4.Google Scholar
Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, 57(1), 289–300.Google Scholar
Campos, A. D., Mendes, H. O., & Soares, A. P. (2018). The role of syllables in intermediate-depth stress-timed languages: masked priming evidence in European Portuguese. Reading and Writing, 31(5), 1209–1229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campos, A. D., Mendes, H. O., & Soares, A. P. (2019). Temporal dynamics of syllable priming effects on visual word recognition: Evidence from different prime durations. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000198.Google ScholarPubMed
Carreiras, M., Álvarez, C. J., & de Vega, M. (1993). Syllable frequency and visual word recognition in Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 766–780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreiras, M., & Perea, M. (2002). Masked priming effects with syllabic neighbours in a lexical decision task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28, 1228–1242.Google Scholar
Chetail, F. (2014). Effect of number of syllables in visual word recognition: new insights from the lexical decision task. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(10), 1249–1256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2009a). Syllabic priming in lexical decision and naming tasks: The syllable congruency effect re-examined in French. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 40–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2009b). The syllable frequency effect in visual recognition of French words: A study in skilled and beginning readers. Reading and Writing, 22, 955–973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2009c). Activation of syllable units during visual recognition of French words in Grade 2. Journal of Child Language, 36, 883–894.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2011). Effect of syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 951–957.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2012). Effect of syllable congruency in sixth graders in the lexical decision task with masked priming. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16, 537–549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cholin, J., Levelt, W. J. M., & Schiller, N. O. (2006). Effects of syllable frequency in speech production. Cognition, 99, 205–235.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colé, P., Magnan, A., & Grainger, J. (1999). Syllable-sized units in visual word recognition: Evidence from skilled and beginning readers of French. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20(4), 507–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colé, P., & Sprenger-Charolles, L. (1999). Traitement syllabique au cours de la reconnaissance de mots écrits chez des enfants dyslexiques, lecteurs en retard et normo-lecteurs de 11 ans [Phonological processing and metaphonological skills: A comparison between eleven year old French readers at different reading levels]. Revue de Neuropsychologie, 4, 323–360.Google Scholar
Conrad, M., Carreiras, M., Tamm, S., & Jacobs, A. M. (2009). Syllables and bigrams: Orthographic redundancy and syllabic units affect visual word recognition at different processing levels. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35(2), 461–479.Google ScholarPubMed
Conrad, M., Grainger, J., & Jacobs, A. M. (2007). Phonology as the source of syllable frequency effects in visual word recognition: Evidence from French. Memory & Cognition, 35(5), 974–983.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conrad, M., Tamm, S., Carreiras, M., & Jacobs, A. M. (2010). Simulating syllable frequency effects within an interactive activation framework. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 22(5), 861–893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doignon, N., & Zagar, D. (2005). Illusory conjunctions in French: The nature of sublexical units in visual word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20(3), 443–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doignon, N., & Zagar, D. (2006). Les enfants en cours d'apprentissage de la lecture perçoivent-ils la syllabe à l’écrit? [Do children in the course of learning to read perceive syllables in the written word?]. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 258–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrand, L., & New, B. (2003). Syllabic length effects in visual word recognition and naming. Acta Psychologica, 113, 167–183.10.1016/S0001-6918(03)00031-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forster, K. I., & Davis, C. (1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10(4), 680–698.Google Scholar
Forster, K. I., & Forster, J. C. (2003). DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35(1), 116–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goswami, U., & Bryant, P. E. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Grainger, J., & Jacobs, A. M. (1996). Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: A multiple read-out model. Psychological Review, 103(3), 518–565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grainger, J., Lété, B., Bertrand, D., Dufau, S., & Ziegler, J. C. (2012). Evidence for multiple routes in learning to read. Cognition, 123(3), 280–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grigorenko, E. (2000). Intelligence: A new look. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 188(5), 311–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernandez, D. J. (2011). Double jeopardy: How third-grade reading skills and poverty influence high school graduation. Baltimore, MD: The Annie E. Casey Foundation.Google Scholar
Hochberg, Y. (1988). A sharper Bonferroni procedure for multiple tests of significance. Biometrika, 75, 800–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jared, D., Levy, A. B., & Rayner, K. (1999). The role of phonology in the activation of word meanings during readings: Evidence from proofreading and eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(3), 219–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jiménez, J. E., García, E., O'Shanahan, I., & Rojas, E. (2010). Do Spanish children use the syllable in visual word recognition in learning to read? Spanish Journal of Psychology, 13, 63–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jiménez, J. E., & Hernández, I. V. (2000). Word Identification and Reading Disorders in the Spanish Language. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33(1), 44–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, L., & Baldasare, J. (1983). Syllable Coding in Printed-Word Recognition by Children and Adults. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(2), 245–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khuri, A. I., Mathew, T., & Sinha, B. K. (1998). Statistical Tests for Linear Mixed Models. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupker, S. J., & Davis, J. (2009). Sandwich priming: A method for overcoming the limitations of masked priming by reducing lexical competitor effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(3), 618–639.Google ScholarPubMed
Luque, J. L., López-Zamora, M., Álvarez, C. J., & Bordoy, S. (2013). Beyond decoding deficit: inhibitory effect of positional syllable frequency in dyslexic Spanish children. Annals of Dyslexia, 63, 239–252.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maïonchi-Pino, M., Magnan, A., & Écalle, J. (2010). Syllable frequency effects in visual word recognition: Developmental approach in French children. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 31(1), 70–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathey, S., & Zagar, D. (2002). Lexical similarity in visual word recognition: The effect of syllabic neighbourhood in French. Current Psychology Letters: Behaviour, Brain & Cognition, 8, 107–121.Google Scholar
Maughan, B., Pickles, A., Hagell, A., Rutter, M., & Yule, W. (1996). Reading problems and antisocial behaviour: Developmental trends in comorbidity. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 37, 405–418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mehler, J., Dommergues, J. Y., Frauenfelder, U., & Segui, J. (1981). The syllable's role in speech segmentation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 298–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metuschek, H., Kliegl, R., Vasisth, S., Baayen, H., & Bates, D. (2017). Balancing Type error and power in linear mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 94, 305–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morais, J., Content, A., Cary, L., Mehler, J., & Segui, J. (1989). Syllabic segmentation and literacy. Language and Cognitive Processes 4(1), 57–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moret-Tatay, C., & Perea, M. (2011). Is the go/no-go lexical decision task preferable to the yes/no task with developing readers? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110, 125–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muncer, S. J., & Knight, D. C. (2012). The bigram trough hypothesis and the syllable number effect in lexical decision. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(11), 2221–2230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pelli, D. G., Farell, B., & Moore, D. C. (2003). The remarkable inefficiency of word recognition. Nature, 423, 752–756.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perea, M., & Carreiras, M. (1998). Effects of syllable frequency and syllable neighbourhood frequency in visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24(1), 1341–1344.Google Scholar
Perea, M., Mallouh, R. A., & Carreiras, M. (2014). Are root letters compulsory for lexical access in Semitic languages? The case of masked form-priming in Arabic. Cognition, 132, 491–500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perea, M., Soares, A. P., Comesaña, M. (2013). Contextual diversity is a main determinant of word identification times in young readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116(1), 37–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prinzmetal, W., Treiman, R., & Rho, S. H. (1986). How to see a reading unit. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 461–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rapp, B. C. (1992). The nature of sublexical orthographic organization: The bigram trough hypothesis examined. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 33–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rastle, K., & Brysbaert, M. (2006). Masked phonological priming effects in English: Are they real? Do they matter? Cognitive Psychology, 53(2), 97–145.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rastle, K., Davis, M. H., & New, B. (2004). The broth in my brother's brothel: Morpho-orthographic segmentation in visual word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 11(6), 1090–1098.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Satterthwaite, F. F. (1941). Synthesis of variance. Psychometrika, 6, 309–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sebastián-Gallés, N., Dupoux, E., Segui, J., & Mehler, J. (1992). Contrasting syllabic effect in Catalan and Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 18–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. (1987). Sublexical structures in visual word recognition: Access units or orthographic redundancy? In Coltheart, M. (Ed.), Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading (pp. 245–263). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. (1988). Cognitive neuropsychology and language: The state of the art. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 5(4), 403–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. L. (1989). A distributed developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523–568.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shankweiler, D., Crain, S., Brady, S., and Macaruso, P. (1992). Identifying the causes of reading disability. In Reading Acquisition, eds. Gough, P.B., Ehri, L.C., and Treiman, R.. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Shaywitz, S. E. (1998). Current concepts: Dyslexia. New England Journal of Medicine, 338, 307–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiller, N. O. (1997). The role of the syllable in speech production: Evidence from lexical statistics, metalinguistics, masked priming, and electromagnetic midsagittal articulography. PhD dissertation, Nijmegen University (MPI series; 2).Google Scholar
Schilling, H. E. H., Rayner, K., & Chumbley, J. I. (1989). Comparing naming, lexical decision, and eye fixation times: Word frequency effects and individual differences. Memory and Cognition, 26(6), 1270–1281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snowling, M. J. (1991). Developmental Reading Disorders. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 32(1), 49–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snowling, M. J. (2001). From language to reading and dyslexia. Dyslexia, 7, 37–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soares, A. P., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Simões, A., Costa, A., Machado, J., … Perea, M. (2018). Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database. Behavior Research Methods, 50, 1461–148.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soares, A. P., Lages, A., Oliveira, H., & Hernández, J. (2019). The mirror reflects more for d than for b: Right asymmetry bias on the visual recognition of words containing reversal letters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 182, 18–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soares, A. P., Medeiros, J. C., Simões, A., Machado, J., Costa, A., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Pinheiro, A. P., & Comesaña, M. (2014a). ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese Elementary to Middle School textbooks. Behavior Research Methods, 46(1), 240–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soares, A. P., Perea, M., & Comesaña, M. (2014b). Tracking the emergence of the consonant bias in visual-word recognition: Evidence with developing readers. PLoS ONE 9(2), e88580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soares, A. P., Lages, A., Silva, A., Comesaña, M., Sousa, I., Pinheiro, A. P., & Perea, M. (2019). Psycholinguistics variables in the visual-word recognition and pronunciation of European Portuguese words: A megastudy approach. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(6), 689–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soares, A. P., Machado, J., Costa, A., Iriarte, A., Simões, A., Almeida, J. J., Comesaña, M., & Perea, M. (2015). On the advantages of frequency and contextual diversity measures extracted from measures extracted from subtitles: The case of Portuguese. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(4), 680–696.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spreen, O. (1989). Long-term sequelae of learning disability: A review of outcome studies. In Bakker, D.J. & Van Der Vlugt, H. (Eds.). Learning disabilities es: Vol. 1. Neuropsychological correlates and treatment (pp. 55–70). Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, E. J., Lupker, S. J., & Davis, C. J. (2012). Transposed-letter priming effects with masked subset primes: A re-examination of the “relative position priming constraint”. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27(4), 475–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Orden, G. C., Pennington, B. F., & Stone, G. O. (1990). Word identification in reading and the promise of subsymbolic psycholinguistics. Psychological Review, 97(4), 488–522.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed