Syllables as processing units in handwriting production.

Abstract

This research focused on the syllable as a processing unit in handwriting. Participants wrote, in uppercase letters, words that had been visually presented. The interletter intervals provide information on the timing of motor production. In Experiment 1, French participants wrote words that shared the initial letters but had different syllable boundaries. In Experiment 2, French- and Spanish-speaking participants wrote cognates and pseudowords with a letter sequence that was always intrasyllabic in French and intersyllabic in Spanish. In Experiment 3, French-Spanish bilinguals wrote the cognates and pseudowords with the same type of sequences. In the 3 experiments, the critical interletter intervals were longer between syllables than within syllables, indicating that word syllable structure constrains motor production both in French and Spanish.

Effects of grapheme-to-phoneme probability on writing durations

“…In the words included in the higher-frequency condition (SER.VICE, [sɛ vis]), this ILI is always intrasyllabic, so this effect could be attributable simply to differences in the positions of the syllable boundary. Longer ILIs have been repeatedly found in intersyllable than in intrasyllable intervals (Álvarez, Cottrell, & Afonso, 2009;Kandel, Álvarez, & Vallée, 2006). This pattern would fit the effect observed in Experiment 1a for ILI1.…”

“…However, since ILI1 was always intersyllabic in the words in the lower-frequency condition (but not in the case of words in the higher-probability condition), it could be argued that these results reflect a syllabic boundary effect. Intersyllabic intervals have been repeatedly reported to be significantly longer than intrasyllabic intervals (Álvarez et al, 2009;Kandel et al, 2006), so the effect observed in ILI1 could indeed have been explained by this. In order to test this possibility, Experiment 2 was conducted with the Spanish polyvalent grapheme C. In this case, the target ILIs did not differ in their syllabic status: They were always intrasyllabic in both experimental conditions.…”

“…To this end, we conducted Experiment 2 in Spanish. Although different results could be obtained in different languages, we expected results analogous to those obtained in French, since similar phonological effects in handwriting have been reported in both languages (Álvarez et al, 2009;Kandel et al, 2006). In Experiment 2, we tried to replicate the G-P probability effects observed in Experiment 1a with the Spanish grapheme C, which is pronounced /k/ or /θ/ depending on the context.…”

“…The syllable boundary was placed in both conditions after the target letter, so the stimuli were comparable until ILI1. Moreover, syllable boundary effects have been thoroughly detailed in previous studies, and in those studies using uppercase letters, they have not been reported to affect letter durations or previous ILIs (Álvarez et al, 2009;Kandel et al, 2006). In Experiment 2, we tested a polyvalent Spanish grapheme to establish the source of the results reported in Experiment 1.…”

Impact of phonology on the generation of handwritten responses: Evidence from picture-word interference tasks

“…Kandel, Álvarez, and Vallée (2006) investigated the potential role of syllabic representations in handwriting by asking participants to write down visually presented words. In order to suppress phonological recoding of the stimulus words, which may by itself render syllabic effects, the authors asked their participants to engage in concurrent articulatory suppression while performing the primary task: At the beginning of each trial, they counted aloud starting at 1, and they continued until the trial was finished.…”