Universal Restrictions in Reading: What Do French Beginning Readers (Mis)perceive?

Abstract

Despite the many reports that consider statistical distribution to be vitally important in visual identification tasks in children, some recent studies suggest that children do not always rely on statistical properties to help them locate syllable boundaries. Indeed, sonority-a universal phonological element-might be a reliable source for syllable segmentation. More specifically, are children sensitive to a universal phonological sonority-based markedness continuum within the syllable boundaries for segmentation (e.g., from marked, illegal intervocalic clusters, "jr," to unmarked, legal intervocalic clusters, "rj"), and how does this sensitivity progress with reading acquisition? To answer these questions, we used the classical illusory conjunction (IC) paradigm. Forty-eight French typically developing children were tested in April (T1), October (T2) and April (T3; 20 children labeled as "good" readers, M chronological age at T1 = 81.5 ± 4.0; 20 children labeled as "poor" readers, M chronological age at T1 = 80.9 ± 3.4). In this short-term longitudinal study, not only we confirmed that syllable segmentation abilities develop with reading experience and level but the Condition × Sonority interaction revealed for the first time that syllable segmentation in reading may be modulated by phonological sonority-based markedness in the absence or quasi-absence of statistical information, in particular within syllable boundaries; this sensitivity is present at an early age and does not depend on reading level and sonority-unrelated features.

Sonority as a Phonological Cue in Early Perception of Written Syllables in French

“…One of the phonological universals—here sonority , which underlies the markedness constraints—has been demonstrated to crucially contribute to syllable-based effects in visual (pseudo)word processing in adults, children who are learning to read, and children with developmental dyslexia in French (e.g., Bedoin and Dissard, 2002 ; Marouby-Terriou and Denhière, 2002 ; Fabre and Bedoin, 2003 ; Maïonchi-Pino et al, 2012a , b , 2015a ; Maïonchi-Pino et al, 2020 ).…”

“…A most recent argument comes from Maïonchi-Pino et al (2020) , who used intervocalic C 1 C 2 clusters with null or quasi-null orthographic and phonological statistical values (e.g., “VG” in “UVGOZE”) in a short-term developmental study. Maïonchi-Pino et al (2020) designed their stimuli following the acute Gouskova’s (2004) proposal of a gradient-based formalization of the Syllable Contact Law—and hence the Sonority Sequencing Principle—in terms of phonological sonority-based markedness constraints implemented within the Optimality Theory (e.g., Prince and Smolensky, 2004 ). Within the Optimality Theory, Gouskova’s (2004) syllable contact is a stratified relational hierarchy that determines the well-formedness of a coda or onset not in isolation but in relation to the adjacent individual sonorities of onset and coda, respectively.…”

“…The markedness pattern across syllable boundaries is, therefore, the complete opposite of the markedness pattern in onset clusters. Outstandingly, the results of Maïonchi-Pino et al (2020) perfectly echo to Gouskova’s (2004) syllable contact: beginning readers from first grade increasingly—and automatically—conformed to optimal syllable boundaries with intervocalic C 1 C 2 clusters following a continuum from illegal, marked SPs in which children promoted optimal syllable onsets (i.e., “high-rise” SPs; e.g., “DM” as “U.DMUBE”) to legal, unmarked SPs (i.e., “high-fall” SPs; e.g., “VG” as “UV.GOZE”).…”

“…To do so, we used an illusory conjunction paradigm (IC, henceforth) with C 1 C 2 clusters that mostly do not exist or are not allowed in onset position, as they are phonotactically illegal in French; see Dell (1995) —from marked SPs to unmarked SPs within written pseudowords to bypass —or at least to suppress—the language-specific salience of letter and sound co-occurrences. Although Maïonchi-Pino et al (2020) only a posteriori analyzed the potential influence of acoustic–phonetic parameters (e.g., voicing, place- and manner-of-articulation of the intervocalic clusters, etc. ), the present study tried to neutralize upstream—or at least disrupt—the potential activation of acoustic–phonetic properties on the expression and the amplitude of the (mis)perception of C 1 C 2 clusters by adding and playing white noise.…”

“…For a complementary description of other sonority-based linguistic principles, seeMaïonchi-Pino et al (2020).Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org…”