Syllabic priming in lexical decision and naming tasks: The syllable congruency effect re-examined in French.

Abstract

This study investigated the role of the syllable in visual recognition of French words. The syllable congruency procedure was combined with masked priming in the lexical-decision task (Experiments 1 and 3) and the naming task (Experiment 2). Target words were preceded by a nonword prime sharing the first three letters that either corresponded to the syllable (congruent condition), or not (incongruent condition). When primes were displayed for 67 ms, similar results were found in both the lexical decision and the naming tasks. Consonant-vowel targets such as BA.LANCE were recognised more rapidly in the congruent condition than in the incongruent and control conditions, while consonant-vowel-consonant targets such as BAL.CON were recognised more rapidly in the congruent and incongruent conditions than in the control condition. When a 43-ms SOA was used in the lexical-decision task, no significant priming effect was obtained. The results are discussed in an interactive-activation model incorporating syllable units.Keywords: syllable congruency, lexical decision, naming, masked priming, CV versus CVC syllables In recent decades, numerous studies have shown that phonological information is automatically activated during visual word recognition (see Frost, 1998, for a review). Masked priming (Forster & Davis, 1984) is a widely used paradigm to study phonological effects (e.g., Frost, Ahissar, Gotesman, & Tayeb, 2003;Grainger, Diependaele, Spinelli, Ferrand, & Farioli, 2003;Lukatela, Frost, & Turvey, 1998;Pollatsek, Perea, & Carreiras, 2005;Rastle & Brysbaert, 2006;Shen & Forster, 1999). Besides avoiding strategic processes from participants (Forster, 1998), this paradigm has made it possible to demonstrate that phonological effects are not confounded with orthographic activation (e.g., Frost et al., 2003;Lukatela et al., 1998). Moreover, phonological effects were obtained in tasks that did not involve postlexical phonological units, suggesting that these phonological effects arose from prelexical and lexical processes rather than articulatory processes (e.g., Lukatela et al., 1998).To take into account robust phonological effects, models of visual word recognition have to include a phonological coding of visual inputs. This feature requires determining which phonological units are activated during silent reading. In languages with clear syllable boundaries like Spanish, data have shown that syllables are involved in the processing of polysyllabic words (e.g., Alvarez, Carreiras, & Perea, 2004;Carreiras, Alvarez, & de Vega, 1993;Carreiras & Perea, 2002;Perea & Carreiras, 1998). In French also, there is evidence for the activation of syllable units during lexical access (e.g., Carreiras, Ferrand, Grainger, & Perea, 2005;Doignon & Zagar, 2005;Mathey & Zagar, 2002;Mathey, Zagar, Doignon, & Seigneuric, 2006). However, the results are less consistent than in Spanish since some studies failed to obtain syllabic effects during the processing of French words (e.g., Brand, Rey, & Peereman, 2003;Rouibah & Taft, 2001). To account...

InfoSyll: A Syllabary Providing Statistical Information on Phonological and Orthographic Syllables

“…Beyond the necessities of this specific experimental situation per se, the syllabic structure is a variable which has received little consideration to date in skilled reading. However, some data indicated that words beginning with a consonant-vowel-consonant first syllable were processed longer than words beginning with a consonant-vowel first syllable (Chetail and Mathey 2009a), and that syllable congruency effects were more reliable for words beginning with a consonant-vowel first syllable (Alvarez et al 2004), thus suggesting the need to take this variable into account. In the same vein, little information is provided about the establishment of syllable boundaries when selecting words for experiments on syllables.…”

“…Syllable congruency effects have also been found in the naming task, though the data are more contrasted. Some studies reported facilitatory syllable congruency effects (Chetail and Mathey 2009a;Ferrand et al 1996 in French;Ferrand et al 1997, in English) while others did not (e.g., Brand et al 2003;in French;Schiller 1998, in Dutch;Schiller 2000, in English). In particular, segmental priming effects were found rather than syllable congruency effects.…”

“…Usually, variables are selected similarly both in naming and lexical decision tasks given that the same (or the same kind of) materials is used in both tasks (e.g., Carreiras et al 1993;Chetail and Mathey 2009a;Ferrand et al 1996Ferrand et al , 1997. From the first experiments on the syllable frequency effect, it has been clear that positional syllable frequency needs to be considered, mainly in bisyllabic words.…”

“…However, to bypass the complex issue of setting boundary locations in polysyllabic utterances, words are usually selected so that there is no case of ambisyllabicity (i.e., when an internal consonant could belong either to the coda of first syllable or to the onset of the next syllable, such as in panic which can be segmented both into pa.nic and pan.ic). This precaution made it possible to manipulate syllables which are clearly extracted from speech utterances (e.g., Carreiras and Perea 2002;Chetail and Mathey 2009a;Ferrand et al 1996). Finally, although polysyllabic words have usually been used in studies investigating syllabic effects, a few studies have also used monosyllable words to investigate the activation of the syllables in relation to orthographic information (Mathey et al 2006, in the lexical decision task; see also Doignon-Camus et al 2009;Seidenberg 1987; in the illusory conjunction task).…”

“…In addition, it has been proposed to encode syllable frequency in the syllabic level by using a resting activation level based on frequency, which would also increase the activation speed of high-frequency syllables (Mathey et al 2006). A similar interactive activation framework incorporating syllable units has been considered to account for syllabic effects in naming (e.g., Chetail and Mathey 2009a). In particular, inhibitory effects are assumed to ensue from lexical competition between syllabic neighbours while facilitatory effects are assumed to ensue from facilitation during the retrieval in the mental syllabary of the articulatory-phonetic syllable programs required for word pronunciation (see Levelt and Wheeldon 1994).…”