Stress sensitivity and reading performance in Spanish: A study with children

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between ability to detect changes in prosody and reading performance in Spanish. Participants were children aged 7-8 years. Their tasks consisted of reading words, reading non-words, stressing non-words and reproducing sequences of two, three or four non-words by pressing the corresponding keys on the computer keyboard. Non-word sequences were constructed with minimal non-word pairs differing in a single phoneme (/kúpi/ -/kúti/) or in the stress pattern (/mípa/ -/mipá/). Results showed that performance on phoneme contrast sequences (e.g. /kúpi/ -/kúti/) predicted word reading. In contrast, performance on stress contrast sequences (e.g. /mípa/ -/mipá/) predicted non-word reading, but only when two-non-word sequences were analysed. This suggests that stress sensitivity may be one of the factors related to reading fluency as most errors at reading non-words consisted of false starts and pauses between syllables. Results also showed that stress sensitivity (scored in two non-word sequences) predicted stress assignment, and that knowledge of stress rules predicted both word and non-word reading. This suggests that stress sensitivity may help in learning stress rules, and that knowledge of stress rules is relevant for reading.

Habilidades fonológicas suprasegmentales y desarrollo lector en niños de educación primaria

“…Por tanto, la conciencia de los elementos suprasegmentales a nivel oral facilitaría la adecuada detección de los cambios de entonación que los signos de puntuación determinan y, por tanto, un buen rendimiento en la tarea. Tomados los resultados en su conjunto, parece que la conciencia del acento facilitaría la automaticidad en la decodificación, tal y como apuntan otros estudios (Gutiérrez-Palma y Palma- Reyes, 2007;Gutiérrez-Palma et al, 2009;Whalley y Hansen, 2006), mientras que las tareas de nombres compuestos y ritmo no lingüístico, donde entran en juego otros elementos prosódicos, tendrían mayor relación con la lectura prosódica, donde son clave las pausas y los cambios de entonación.…”

Does speech rhythm sensitivity predict children's reading ability 1 year later?

“…More recently, Holliman, Wood, and Sheehy (2008) found that performance on this task could predict a significant amount of unique variance in word reading (3.8%) in a group of early readers after controlling for age, vocabulary, phoneme deletion, and rhyme detection ability (phonological awareness). Links between speech rhythm and word reading have also been demonstrated in other recent studies involving stress manipulation and sensitivity (Gutierrez-Palma & Reyes, 2007;Holliman, Wood, & Sheehy, 2009, in press;Wood & Terrell, 1998). Goswami et al (2002) investigated whether reading difficulties are associated with deficits in perceptual rhythmic timing.…”

Prosodic Awareness Skills and Literacy Acquisition in Spanish

“…Gutiérrez-Palma and Palma (2007) explored this relationship in children in 1st and 2nd year of Primary Education using the task designed by Dupoux et al (2001). The task involves discriminating between minimum pairs of pseudowords with a phonemic difference ("/kúpi/" vs. "/kúti/") or a prosodic difference ("/mípa/" vs. "/mipá/").…”

“…In fact, the use of the stress mark is related to phonology but cannot be considered a true phoneme-to-grapheme conversion rule. Mastering the written mark of a stressed syllable is associated with knowing the word's prosodic characteristics (Gutiérrez-Palma and Palma 2007). In the same way as phonological awareness is related to reading and spelling acquisition, stress awareness (SA)-the ability to detect and manipulate the stress of words-may also be related to such acquisition, particularly in Spanish.…”