Who is dominating the Dutch neighbourhood? On the role of subsyllabic units in Dutch nonword reading.
To assess the role of the subsyllabic units onset-nucleus (ON; spark) and rime (spark) in Dutch visual word recognition, we compared lexical decisions to four groups of nonwords in which the existence of ONs and rimes was orthogonally manipulated. Nonwords with existent ONs and/or rimes were rejected more slowly and less accurately. ON and rime neighbours thus influence Dutch nonword reading to the same extent. Simulations with the interactive activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981) revealed that this model with left-to-right coded representations could not replicate the effects found in the lexical decision data whereas an adapted version with representations of onset, nucleus, and coda could. Effects of the larger units ON and rime emerged from activation patterns created by the smaller units onset, nucleus, and coda.
Loncke
Maaike
M
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, Ghent, Belgium. Maaike.Loncke@ugent.be
Martensen
Heike
H
van Heuven
Walter J B
WJ
Sandra
Dominiek
D
D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning / Q000502:physiology; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult