title: Prefixes repel stress in reading aloud: Evidence from surface dyslexia.
abstract: This study examined the importance of prefixes as sublexical cues for stress assignment during reading aloud English disyllabic words. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that prefixes repel stress (Rastle & Coltheart, 2000) by investigating the likelihood with which patients with surface dyslexia assign second-syllable stress to prefixed words. Five such patients were presented with three types of disyllabic words for reading aloud: 'regular' prefixed words with weak-strong stress pattern (e.g., remind); 'irregular' prefixed words with strong-weak stress pattern (e.g., reflex); and non-prefixed words with strong-weak stress pattern (e.g., scandal). Results showed that all five patients frequently regularized the strong-weak prefixed words by pronouncing them with second syllable stress. These regularization errors provide strong evidence for the functional role of prefixes in stress assignment during reading. Additional computational simulations using the rule-based algorithm for pronouncing disyllables developed by Rastle and Coltheart (2000) and the CDP++ model of reading aloud (Perry et al., 2010) allowed us to evaluate how these two opponent approaches to reading aloud fare in respect of the patient data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Electronic address: Maria.Ktori@rhul.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ktori
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Swansea University, UK.
authors.forename: Jeremy J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Tree
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
authors.forename: Petroula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mousikou
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, and Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Australia.
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Coltheart
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
authors.forename: Kathleen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rastle
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Computational modelling; Prefixes; Reading aloud; Surface dyslexia