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Lexical and Phonological Processing in Visual Word Recognition by Stuttering Children: Evidence from Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2014

Carlos J. Álvarez ,
Janeth Hernández-Jaramillo  and
Juan A. Hernández-Cabrera
Carlos J. Álvarez*
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna (Spain)
Janeth Hernández-Jaramillo
Affiliation:
Universidad del Rosario (Colombia)
Juan A. Hernández-Cabrera
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Carlos Javier Álvarez González. Dpto. de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y Organizacional. Facultad de Psicología. Campus de Guajara. Universidad de La Laguna. 38205. La Laguna (Spain). Phone: 0034–922317507. Fax: 0034–922317461. E-mail: carlos.j.alvarez@gmail.com
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Abstract

A number of studies have pointed out that stuttering-like disfluencies could be the result of failures in central and linguistic processing. The goal of the present paper is to analyze if stuttering implies deficits in the lexical and phonological processing in visual word recognition. This study compares the performance of 28 children with and without stuttering in a standard lexical decision task in a transparent orthography: Spanish. Word frequency and syllable frequency were manipulated in the experimental words. Stutterers were found to be considerably slower (in their correct responses) and produced more errors than the non- stutterers (χ(1) = 36.63, p < .001, η2 = .60). There was also a facilitation effect of syllable frequency, restricted to low frequency words and only in the stutterers group (t1(10) = 3.67, p < .005; t2(36) = 3.10, p < .001). These outcomes appear to suggest that the decoding process of stutterers exhibits a deficit in the interface between the phonological-syllabic level and the word level.

Keywords

stutteringreadingword processingphonological encodingsyllable

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 17 , 2014 , E57
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2014 

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