Accent mark and visual word recognition in Spanish

Schwab, Sandra

doi:10.3989/loquens.2015.018

Cited by 6 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Recent lexical decision experiments in Spanish have revealed that omitting the accent mark in a word does not entail longer word identification times (e.g., cárcel = carcel; Schwab, 2015; fácil-FÁCIL = facil-FÁCIL; Perea et al, 2020). These findings were interpreted in terms of accented and non-accented vowels activating the same abstract orthographic representations—note that accent marks in Spanish indicate lexical stress with no changes in vowel quality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent empirical evidence using laboratory visual word recognition tasks has shown that omitting the accent mark in Spanish words with unambiguous spellings does not entail a processing cost for the readers. Using a lexical decision task (“does the letter string form a word?”) with skilled adult readers, Schwab (2015) found remarkably similar response times for words regardless of presenting the normative accent mark (e.g., cárcel) or not (e.g., carcel). (Of note, participants were asked not to pay attention to whether the accent mark was present/omitted.)…”

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confidence: 84%

“…As a result, one would expect a deleterious effect of omitting a word’s accent mark in first-pass measures on the target word (e.g., first-fixation durations and gaze durations). This outcome would require reinterpreting some of the conclusions put forward by Schwab (2015) and Perea et al (2020). Finally, the third scenario is that accent marks play a facilitative role in sentence reading, but only at late stages of lexical processing (e.g., at a post-access processing stage; see Slattery & Rayner, 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…(Of note, participants were asked not to pay attention to whether the accent mark was present/omitted.) Schwab (2015) concluded that this finding “casts some doubts about the necessity to use in the Spanish spelling the accent mark in unambiguous words” (p. 13). In a similar vein, Perea et al (2020) found that the identification time of an accented word like FÁCIL was similar when it was very briefly (50 ms) preceded by the masked prime facil (i.e., identical except for the omission of the accent mark) and fácil—the masked prime fecil yielded slower response times.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…We can envision three potential outcomes concerning the effect of omitting a word’s accent mark in Spanish when reading sentences: no effect, an early effect, or a late-only effect. The first scenario is that omitting a word’s accent mark does not affect lexical access (as proposed by Schwab, 2015). In this case, the duration of fixations on the target word (e.g., cárcel or carcel) would be alike on first-pass fixations (e.g., first-fixation duration; gaze duration [sum of fixations before leaving the word]) and on the total time (i.e., the sum of first-pass fixations and those fixations where readers went back to the target word).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Does omitting the accent mark in a word affect sentence reading? Evidence from Spanish

Marcet

Perea

2021

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Lexical stress in multisyllabic words is consistent in some languages (e.g., first syllable in Finnish), but it is variable in others (e.g., Spanish, English). To help lexical processing in a transparent language like Spanish, scholars have proposed a set of rules specifying which words require an accent mark indicating lexical stress in writing. However, recent word recognition using that lexical decision showed that word identification times were not affected by the omission of a word's accent mark in Spanish. To examine this question in a paradigm with greater ecological validity, we tested whether omitting the accent mark in a Spanish word had a deleterious effect during silent sentence reading. A target word was embedded in a sentence with its accent mark or not. Results showed no reading cost of omitting the word's accent mark in first-pass eye fixation durations, but we found a cost in the total reading time spent on the target word (i.e., including re-reading). Thus, the omission of an accent mark delays late, but not early, lexical processing in Spanish. These findings help constrain the locus of accent mark information in models of visual word recognition and reading. Furthermore, these findings offer some clues on how to simplify the Spanish rules of accentuation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 84%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Does omitting the accent mark in a word affect sentence reading? Evidence from Spanish

Marcet

Perea

2021

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Does adding an accent mark hinder lexical access? Evidence from Spanish

2022

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Recent research has shown that omitting the accent mark in a Spanish word, which is a language in which these diacritics only indicate lexical stress, does not cause a delay in lexical access (e.g., cárcel [prison] ≈ carcel; cárcel-CÁRCEL ≈ carcel-CÁRCEL). This pattern has been interpreted as accented and nonaccented vowels sharing the abstract letter representations in Spanish. However, adding an accent mark to a nonaccented Spanish word appears to produce a reading cost in masked priming paradigms (e.g., féliz-FELIZ [happy] > feliz-FELIZ). We examined whether adding an accent mark to a non accented Spanish word slows down lexical access in two semantic categorization experiments to solve this puzzle. We added an accent mark either on the stressed syllable (Experiment 1, e.g., cébra for the word cebra [zebra]) or an unstressed syllable (Experiment 2, e.g., cebrá). While effect sizes were small in magnitude, adding an accent mark produced a cost relative to the intact words, especially when the accent mark was added on an unstressed syllable (cebrá > cebra). These findings favor the view that letter identity and (to a lesser extent) accent mark information are encoded during word recognition in Spanish. We also examined the practical implications of these results.

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Are goats chèvres, chévres, chēvres, and chevres? Unveiling the orthographic code of diacritical vowels.

Labusch¹,

Massol²,

Marcet³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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An often overlooked but fundamental issue for any comprehensive model of visual-word recognition is the representation of diacritical vowels: Do diacritical and nondiacritical vowels share their abstract letter representations? Recent research suggests that the answer is “yes” in languages where diacritics indicate suprasegmental information (e.g., lexical stress, as in [‘ka.ma.ɾa] camera; Spanish), but “no” in languages where diacritics indicate segmental information such as a different phoneme (e.g., the German vowels /ɛ/ and /a/). Here we examined this issue in French, a language that contains a complex set of diacritical vowels (e.g., for the letter : , , , and ). In Experiment 1, using a semantic categorization task, we compared the word identification times to intact diacritical words (e.g., , goat in English) with a condition with omitted diacritics (). Results showed that the two conditions behaved similarly. In Experiments 2–4, we compared the intact diacritical words with a condition containing a mismatching diacritic, either existing in French (e.g., , ) or not (the macron sign, as in ). We only found a reading cost when replacing the diacritic with an existing one. In Experiments 5–6, we compared the semantic categorization times to intact nondiacritical words (e.g., , horse in English) versus a condition with an added diacritic, either existing () or not (). We found a reading cost for the words with the added diacritical mark in both cases. We discuss how models of visual-word recognition can be modified to represent diacritical vowels.

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Accent mark and visual word recognition in Spanish

Cited by 6 publications

References 31 publications

Does omitting the accent mark in a word affect sentence reading? Evidence from Spanish

Does omitting the accent mark in a word affect sentence reading? Evidence from Spanish

Does adding an accent mark hinder lexical access? Evidence from Spanish

Are goats chèvres, chévres, chēvres, and chevres? Unveiling the orthographic code of diacritical vowels.

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