Syllabic segmentation and literacy

Abstract

A total of 40 unschooled Portuguese adults, either illiterates or ex-illiterates, were presented auditorily with short sentences and asked to detect the occurrence of a word initiated by a specified syllable-sized target. The target was either CV or CVC, and the target-bearing word was initiated by either a CV or a CVC syllable. The dependent variable was the number of correct detections. Ex-illiterates performed better than illiterates. There was a significant interaction between target type and word structure: Detections were more numerous when the target coincided with the first syllable of the target-bearing word than when it did not. This effect is similar to the one obtained by Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, and^Segui (1981) in a reaction-time study with French literate subjects, and shows evidence of a syllabification procedure. The fact that this syllable effect is obtained with illiterate subjects, regardless of their overall performance, suggests that the development of a syllabification procedure in speech processing depends primarily on informal experience with the language rather than on formal instruction.

Distinguishing cause from effect – many deficits associated with developmental dyslexia may be a consequence of reduced and suboptimal reading experience

“…Subsequent studies have replicated these results (e.g. Morais, Bertelson, Cary, & Alegria, 1986) but have shown that illiterates perform much better when tested on other meta-phonological abilities such as syllable detection (Morais et al, 1989) or rhyme awareness (Adrián, Alegria, & Morais, 1995;Morais et al, 1986). Read, Yun-Fei, Hong-Yin, and Bao-Qing (1986) demonstrated that it is not literacy per se (i.e.…”

“…Without awareness that words (in alphabetic writing systems) can be decomposed, a reader cannot efficiently decode the orthography of her language. Phonemic awareness develops from larger to smaller units (Morais, Content, Cary, Mehler, & Segui, 1989). Children are typically-able to recognise and manipulate syllables before they can recognise and manipulate onsets and rhymes.…”

Monitoring the Time Course of Phonological Encoding

“…Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, and Segui (1981) found that when subjects monitored for syllable targets (e.g., Ipal and Ipall) in spoken French carrier words (e.g., pa-lace and pal-mier) their responses were faster when the string of target segments corresponded to the first syllable of the target word (e.g., Ipal in palace, Ipall in pal-mier), than when it did not (e.g., Ipall in pa-lace, Ipal in pal-mier). This finding has been replicated in other romance languages (Morias, Content, Cary, Mehler, & Segui, 1989;Sanchez-Casas, 1988). However, attempts to replicate the syllable match effect in English have failed (Cutler, Mehler, Norris, & Segui, 1986).…”

The Role of the Syllable in Lexical Segmentation in French: Word-Spotting Data

“…Hence, the observed effects may not reflect early perceptual processing, but conscious segmentation strategies applying at the postrecognition level (Kolinsky, 1998;Morais, 1985;Morais, Content, Cary, Mehler, & Seguí, 1989). In addition, the finding that the occurrence of the effect is restricted to slow participants (cf.…”