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Interaction between phonemic abilities and syllable congruency effect in young readers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

FABIENNE CHETAIL  and
STÉPHANIE MATHEY
FABIENNE CHETAIL*
Affiliation:
Université Libre de Bruxelles and Université de Bordeaux
STÉPHANIE MATHEY
Affiliation:
Université de Bordeaux
*
Address for correspondence: Fabienne Chetail. Laboratoire Cognition Langage Développement (LCLD), Université Libre de Bruxelles – Avenue F. Roosevelt, 50/CP 191–1050 Brussels – Belgium. tel: +32 2 650 26 07; e-mail: fchetail@ulb.ac.be
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Abstract

This study investigated whether and to what extent phonemic abilities of young readers (Grade 5) influence syllabic effects in reading. More precisely, the syllable congruency effect was tested in the lexical decision task combined with masked priming in eleven-year-old children. Target words were preceded by a pseudo-word prime sharing the first three letters that either corresponded to the syllable (congruent condition) or not (incongruent condition). The data showed that the syllable priming effect interacted with the score of phonemic abilities. In children with good phonemic skills, word recognition was delayed in the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition, while it was speeded up in children with weaker phonemic skills. These findings are discussed in a lexical access model including syllable units.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 492 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

[*]

We are grateful to the students, teachers and head teachers at the St Seurin and Stendhal schools for their participation. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

References

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