Syllabic effects in word processing: evidence from the structural induction paradigm.
Spoken words have a rich structural organization in memory, consisting of syllabic and subsyllabic representations. A phoneme monitoring paradigm, in which the target phoneme occurs more frequently in one syllabic position than another (e.g., onset of the 2nd syllable vs. the coda of the 1st syllable: neu-tral vs. nut-meg; C. Pallier, N. Sebastian-Galles, T. Felguera, A. Christophe, & J. Mehler, 1993) was used to explore the formation of syllabic structure during word processing. Experiment 2 investigated how a recognition system that uses syllabic structure processes words with unclear syllable boundaries (e.g., pa-lace or pal-ace?). Two methodological issues were explored: The importance of a baseline condition for measuring effects of induction (Experiment 1) and the form of the representation used in the induction paradigm (Experiment 3). Findings suggest that syllabic structure begins to form early in word processing, and they demonstrate the adequacy of the induction procedure for measuring such processes.
Pitt
M A
MA
Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. Pitt.2@osu.edu
Smith
K L
KL
Klein
J M
JM
D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D014825:Vocabulary