We investigated whether and how sublexical units such as phonological syllables mediate access to the lexicon in French visual word recognition. To do so, two lexical decision task (LDT) experiments examined the nature of the syllabic neighbourhood effect. In Experiments 1a and b, the number of higher frequency syllabic neighbours was manipulated while controlling for the first bigram. The results failed to show a pure syllabic neighbourhood effect. In Experiments 2a and b, syllabic neighbourhood and bigram frequency were factorially manipulated. The interaction showed that the syllabic neighbourhood effect was inhibitory when bigram frequency was high, whereas it was facilitatory when bigram frequency was low. Similar patterns of results were found in both the yes/no (Experiments 1a and 2a) and go/no-go LDTs (Experiments 1b and 2b), so varying task requirements of the lexical decision did not influence the effect. These findings are discussed in the context of parallel distributed processing and interactive-activation models, and suggest that orthographic redundancy properties contribute to the influence of phonological syllables.

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Lexical-decision tasks were used to test the role of neighborhood distribution in visual word recognition. Predictions based on the interactive activation model were generated by running simulations. The data were compared for words with 2 higher frequency neighbors that differed in their neighborhood distribution. The neighbors were "single" when they did not share a neighborhood relationship (e.g., neighbors of flanc: flanc-blanc) or "twin" when they shared a neighborhood relationship (e.g., neighbors of firme: ferme-forme). Results show a facilitatory neighborhood distribution effect on words in Experiments 1 (easy pseudowords) and 3 (difficult pseudowords and easy pseudowords) and on pseudowords in Experiment 2. These data can be accounted for in terms of lexical inhibition in the interactive activation framework.

This study investigated the role of the syllable in visual recognition of French words. The syllable congruency procedure was combined with masked priming in the lexical-decision task (Experiments 1 and 3) and the naming task (Experiment 2). Target words were preceded by a nonword prime sharing the first three letters that either corresponded to the syllable (congruent condition), or not (incongruent condition). When primes were displayed for 67 ms, similar results were found in both the lexical decision and the naming tasks. Consonant-vowel targets such as BA.LANCE were recognised more rapidly in the congruent condition than in the incongruent and control conditions, while consonant-vowel-consonant targets such as BAL.CON were recognised more rapidly in the congruent and incongruent conditions than in the control condition. When a 43-ms SOA was used in the lexical-decision task, no significant priming effect was obtained. The results are discussed in an interactive-activation model incorporating syllable units.Keywords: syllable congruency, lexical decision, naming, masked priming, CV versus CVC syllables In recent decades, numerous studies have shown that phonological information is automatically activated during visual word recognition (see Frost, 1998, for a review). Masked priming (Forster & Davis, 1984) is a widely used paradigm to study phonological effects (e.g., Frost, Ahissar, Gotesman, & Tayeb, 2003;Grainger, Diependaele, Spinelli, Ferrand, & Farioli, 2003;Lukatela, Frost, & Turvey, 1998;Pollatsek, Perea, & Carreiras, 2005;Rastle & Brysbaert, 2006;Shen & Forster, 1999). Besides avoiding strategic processes from participants (Forster, 1998), this paradigm has made it possible to demonstrate that phonological effects are not confounded with orthographic activation (e.g., Frost et al., 2003;Lukatela et al., 1998). Moreover, phonological effects were obtained in tasks that did not involve postlexical phonological units, suggesting that these phonological effects arose from prelexical and lexical processes rather than articulatory processes (e.g., Lukatela et al., 1998).To take into account robust phonological effects, models of visual word recognition have to include a phonological coding of visual inputs. This feature requires determining which phonological units are activated during silent reading. In languages with clear syllable boundaries like Spanish, data have shown that syllables are involved in the processing of polysyllabic words (e.g., Alvarez, Carreiras, & Perea, 2004;Carreiras, Alvarez, & de Vega, 1993;Carreiras & Perea, 2002;Perea & Carreiras, 1998). In French also, there is evidence for the activation of syllable units during lexical access (e.g., Carreiras, Ferrand, Grainger, & Perea, 2005;Doignon & Zagar, 2005;Mathey & Zagar, 2002;Mathey, Zagar, Doignon, & Seigneuric, 2006). However, the results are less consistent than in Spanish since some studies failed to obtain syllabic effects during the processing of French words (e.g., Brand, Rey, & Peereman, 2003;Rouibah & Taft, 2001). To account...

The present study addressed the issue of syllable activation during visual recognition of French words. In addition, it was investigated whether word orthographic information underlies syllable effects. To do so, words were selected according to the frequency of their first syllable (high versus low) and the frequency of the orthographic correspondence of this syllable (high versus low). For example, the high-frequency syllable /ã/ is frequently transcribed by the orthographic cluster an, but infrequently transcribed by han in French. A lexical decision task was performed by skilled readers (Experiment 1) and beginning readers in Grade 5 (Experiment 2). Results yielded an inhibitory effect of syllable frequency in both experiments. Moreover, the reliable interaction between syllable frequency and orthographic correspondence frequency indicated that the syllable frequency effect was influenced by orthographic characteristics of syllables. Finally, data showed that the interaction between phonological and orthographic variables was modified with reading experience. The results are discussed in current models of visual word recognition.