Do Spanish Children Use the Syllable in Visual Word Recognition in Learning to Read?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Spanish children that are learning to read use the syllable unit in word reading. We used a visual version of the syllable monitoring technique (Mehler, Dommerges, Freavenfelder & Seguí, 1981). For Experiment I, we selected first grade readers at the end of the first year of reading instruction. In the Experiment II we selected second grade readers at the middle of the second year of reading instruction. Participants responded whenever the structure of the target string (e.g., bal) appeared at the beginning of a subsequently presented printed word (e.g., bala). The target was either a consonant-vowel (CV) or consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) structure and either did or did not correspond to the initial syllable of the target-bearing word. At the end of the first year of reading instruction, children showed significant effects of syllable compatibility (faster detection times when the targets correspond to the initial syllable of target-bearing words than when they did not). When we tested children of the second year of reading instruction, they also showed a syllable compatibility effect. These results suggest that Spanish children use syllabic units at the beginning of reading instruction in the visual word recognition.

Offline Improvement in Learning to Read a Novel Orthography Depends on Direct Letter Instruction

“…Their knowledge becomes increasingly specific to trained patterns during training. These findings are consistent with bilingual studies showing the effect of reading experience in the first language on the acquisition of reading in the second language (Holm & Dodd, 1996; Jimenez, Garcia, O’Shanahan, & Rojas, 2010).…”

Interaction between phonemic abilities and syllable congruency effect in young readers

“…after only ten months of reading tuition Jiménez et al, 2010). In fifth-graders, the syllabic effect was found in good readers for low-frequency words, while it was found in poor readers for high-frequency words (Colé & Sprenger-Charolles, 1999).…”

Formation of Orthographic Representations in Spanish Dyslexic Children: The Role of Syllable Complexity and Frequency

“…There has been less research on reading processes in Spanish children but it has been reported that the syllable is also an important unit in children's reading, although there is some disagreement about the stage at which children start to make use of syllabic information (frequency of occurrence and complexity) in recognition and reading aloud, perhaps because of differences in methodology (Álvarez, García‐Saavedra, Luque, & Taft, ; Goikoetxea, ; Jiménez, García, O'Shanahan, & Rojas, ; Jiménez & Hernández, ).…”

“…There has been less research on reading processes in Spanish children but it has been reported that the syllable is also an important unit in children's reading, although there is some disagreement about the stage at which children start to make use of syllabic information (frequency of occurrence and complexity) in recognition and reading aloud, perhaps because of differences in methodology (Álvarez, García-Saavedra, Luque, & Taft, 2016;Goikoetxea, 2005;Jiménez, García, O'Shanahan, & Rojas, 2010;Jiménez & Hernández, 2000). Jiménez and Hernández (2000) found a syllable-frequency facilitation effect in both lexical decision tasks and word-naming tasks, words made up of highfrequency syllables were recognized and read faster than words made up of low-frequency syllables.…”