Do Consonant Sonority and Status Influence Syllable-Based Segmentation Strategies in a Visual Letter Detection Task? Developmental Evidence in French Children

Abstract

This article queries whether consonant sonority (sonorant vs. obstruent) and status (coda vs. onset) within intervocalic clusters influence syllable-based segmentation strategies. We used a modified version of the illusory conjunction paradigm to test whether French beginning, intermediate, and advanced readers were sensitive to an optimal "sonorant coda-obstruent onset" sonority profile within the syllable boundaries as a cue for a syllable-based segmentation. Data showed that children used a syllable-based segmentation that improved with reading skills and age. The results Correspondence should be sent to Norbert Maïonchi-Pino,

Is syllable segmentation developmentally constrained by consonant sonority within syllable boundaries in silent reading? Evidence in French children

“…Taken together, our results confirm previous studies relating to the contribution of consonant sonority and consonant position within intervocalic clusters to syllable segmentation strategies in French children (e.g., Maïonchi‐Pino et al, , ). Children experience early and long‐lasting sensitivity to sonority‐based linguistic principles such as the SSP and the Syllable Contact Law.…”

“…The fact that children's performance changes over time corroborates previous studies and does not challenge the idea that syllable segmentation is used. As we have suggested, these response patterns seem to be compatible with the idea of a bidirectional syllable segmentation ([re‐]syllabification strategies) that is underpinned by reading experience and is typically found in developmental studies of silent reading (e.g., Maïonchi‐Pino et al, , ). More specifically, these response patterns could result from the connections that are progressively established between implicit knowledge about phonological syllables (due to oral exposure) and explicit knowledge about written syllable‐sized units (during reading acquisition; e.g., Colé et al, ).…”

“…In an attempt to favour phonological codes and potentially exclude purely orthographically based codes, we used a visual version of the pseudoword recognition task. In light of the previous results reported by the Maïonchi‐Pino et al (, , ) studies, if segmentation strategies benefit from both the connections that are progressively established between implicit knowledge about phonological syllables (resulting from oral exposure) and explicit knowledge about written syllable‐sized units (accumulated during reading acquisition; see the model proposed by Colé, Royer, Leuwers, & Casalis, ) and a sonority‐based organisation that cues children where to locate the syllable boundaries, then we assume that performance will be better in response to the audio‐visual presentation than the visual presentation. Indeed, an audio‐visual presentation should permit the powerful encoding of the phonological and acoustic properties of the target pseudoword and a faithful decoding of the test pseudoword.…”

“…Whereas these studies have revealed contrasting frequency‐modulated findings, other studies have failed to find clear and straightforward evidence that the statistical regularities of letter co‐occurrences modulate word parsing (e.g., Chetail & Mathey, ; Doignon & Zagar, ; Doignon‐Camus et al, ; Doignon‐Camus, Seigneuric, Perrier, Sisti, & Zagar, ; Maïonchi‐Pino, Magnan, & Écalle, ). More importantly, almost all the associated research has, as far as we know, disregarded intrinsic acoustic–phonetic phoneme properties, such as sonority , which may govern how phonemes are arranged in words (Fabre & Bedoin, ; Maïonchi‐Pino, de Cara, Écalle, & Magnan, ; ; ).…”

“…However, a small number of studies have attempted to provide reliable evidence to determine whether – and how – consonant sonority and consonant position influence syllable segmentation and the simplification of complex syllable structures into simple ones in silent reading in French children (but see Fabre and Bedoin, ; Marouby‐Terriou & Denhière, ). On the basis of the previous study of Fabre and Bedoin () – the first authors to be interested in sonority in reading – Maïonchi‐Pino et al (, , ) designed four different SPs within syllable boundaries, which were used across different tasks (i.e., ‘sonorant coda–sonorant onset’ SP, ‘sonorant coda–obstruent onset’ SP, ‘obstruent coda–sonorant onset’ SP and ‘obstruent coda–obstruent onset’ SP). For instance, in the work of Maïonchi‐Pino et al (), the children were instructed to decide whether an audio‐visually presented disyllabic target pseudoword was identical to a test pseudoword or not.…”