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Although the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition, several studies using consonant-vowel (CV) and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) first-syllable words have also shown that reliable effects are observed for CV but not for CVC words. Several proposals have been advanced to account for this syllable structure effect, though studies aiming to directly address this issue are scarce. Here we tested whether syllable complexity might underlie the syllable structure effect observed in several languages, by replicating the masked priming lexical decision study conducted by Campos, Oliveira, and Soares ( 2018) with Portuguese adult skilled readers using 50-ms pseudoword primes, but using longer (67-ms and 82-ms) prime durations. If the structure syllable effect is driven by syllable complexity, increasing prime durations should make facilitative syllable priming effects to emerge for CVC words. Furthermore, by manipulating prime durations we can also provide new insights into the temporal dynamics of syllable effects at early stages of visual word recognition. Results from linear mixed effects (lme) models analyses showed that even with increased prime durations, reliable syllable effects were still restricted to CV words. Increasing prime durations to 67 ms and 82 ms only strengthened orthographic priming effects for CVC words. Moreover, the magnitude of the priming effects for CV words remained fairly constant across these prime durations, thus suggesting that the CV advantage on visual word recognition is not a short-lived effect. Results are discussed attending to current findings in the literature. Public Significance StatementPrevious studies conducted in different languages have shown that the syllable plays a relevant role at the early stages of visual word recognition for CV, but not for CVC first-syllable words. Here we tested whether syllable complexity can account for this syllable structure by manipulating prime durations using a masked priming lexical task. Linear-mixed models (lme) analyses revealed that reliable syllable effects were still observed for CV words and remain fairly constant, even with longer prime duration. Increasing prime durations only strengthened orthographic effects for CVC words. Syllable complexity is not the driving force of the syllable structure effect observed at the early stages of visual word recognition, at least within the range of the prime durations tested in this article with the masked priming paradigm.

Background: Research with the Think/No-Think (TNT) task has shown that voluntary suppression of an unwanted memory may lead to its later forgetting. To date, however, no study has assessed the memory suppression abilities in alcohol-related contexts despite the potential implications that it might have for alcohol research. With this aim, we developed a new version of the TNT paradigm, the TNT Alcohol (TNTA) task, which consists of 36 neutral pictures paired with 36 alcohol/no-alcohol images that are instructed to be suppressed or recollected.Methods: Electroencephalographic activity was recorded from 64 electrodes while 20 young healthy females performed the TNTA task. The event-related potentials (ERPs) typically involved in memory suppression/recollection were analyzed, namely the fronto-central N2, the late parietal positivity (LPP), and the frontal slow wave (FSW).Results: Findings revealed reduced recall for previously learned images that were subsequently instructed to be suppressed (No-Think) relative to those instructed to be retrieved (Think) and those not cued to be suppressed or retrieved (Baseline). This reduction seemed to be more prominent for alcohol-related memories. In addition, ERP analysis showed that compared to attempts of recollection, attempts of memory suppression were associated with attenuated LPP amplitude-more pronounced for alcohol-related memories-(indicating reduced conscious recollection for No-Think images) as well as with increased FSW (suggesting strategic control aiming at decrease accessibility of unwanted memories).Conclusions: These results replicate and extend previously reported behavioral and ERP findings in the TNT paradigm and suggest that the TNTA task may be a useful instrument to measure the ability to suppress alcohol-related memories.

Reading is one of the most important milestones a child achieves throughout development. Above the letter level, the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition in adult skilled readers. However, studies aiming to examine when, during reading acquisition, the syllable emerges as a functional sublexical unit are scarce, and the studies conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. In this work, beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese (EP) developing readers performed a sandwich masked lexical decision task in which CV (e.g., RU.MOR[rumour]) and CVC (e.g., CIS.NE[swan]) first-syllable EP words were preceded either by syllable congruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, cis.ra-CIS.NE), syllable incongruent (e.g., rum.ba-RU.MOR, ci.ser-CIS.NE), unrelated (e.g., va.cra-RU.MOR, zar.vo-CIS.NE) pseudowords primes, or identity (e.g., ru.mour-RU.MOUR, cis.ne-CIS.NE) primes. Results showed reliable syllable effects only for intermediate readers and for CV and CVC words alike. Findings are discussed attending to current models of visual word recognition.

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