Processing of Syllables in Production and Recognition Tasks

Empirical evidence for a functional role of syllables in visual word processing is abundant, however it remains rather heterogeneous. The present study aims to further specify the role of syllables and the cognitive accessibility of syllabic information in word processing. The first experiment compared performance across naming and lexical decision tasks by manipulating the number of syllables in words and non-words. Results showed a syllable number effect in both the naming task and the lexical decision task. The second experiment introduced a stimulus set consisting of isolated syllabic and non-syllabic trigrams. Syllable frequency was manipulated in a naming and in a decision task requiring participants to decide on the syllabic status of letter strings. Results showed faster responses for syllables than for non-syllables in both tasks. Syllable frequency effects were observed in the decision task. In summary, the results from these manipulations of different types of syllable information confirm an important role of syllabic units in both recognition and production.