Facilitation and disruption of lateralized syllable processing by unattended stimuli in the opposite visual field

The influence of lateralized unattended stimuli on the processing of attended stimuli in the opposite visual field can shed light on the nature of information that is transferred between hemispheres. On a cued bilateral task, participants tried to identify a syllable in the attended visual field, which elicits a left hemisphere (LH) advantage and different processing strategies by the two hemispheres. The same or a different syllable or a neutral stimulus appeared in the unattended field. Transmission of unattended syllable codes between hemispheres is symmetric, as revealed by equal interference for the two visual fields. The LH is more accurate than the RH in encoding unattended syllables, as indicated by facilitation in the left but not right visual field and a greater frequency of identifiable intrusions into the left than right field. However, asymmetric encoding strategies are different for attended and unattended syllables.     

Neural mechanisms involved in the oral representation of percussion music: An fMRI study

Numerous music cultures use nonsense syllables to represent percussive sounds. Covert reciting of these syllable sequences along with percussion music aids active listeners in keeping track of music. Owing to the acoustic dissimilarity between the representative syllables and the referent percussive sounds, associative learning is necessary for the oral representation of percussion music. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the neural processes underlying oral rehearsals of music. There were four music conditions in the experiment: (1) passive listening to unlearned percussion music, (2) active listening to learned percussion music, (3) active listening to the syllable representation of (2), and (4) active listening to learned melodic music. Our results specified two neural substrates of the association mechanisms involved in the oral representation of percussion music. First, information integration of heard sounds and the auditory consequences of subvocal rehearsals may engage the right planum temporale during active listening to percussion music. Second, mapping heard sounds to articulatory and laryngeal gestures may engage the left middle premotor cortex.     

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.     

Can we see syllables in monosyllabic words? A study with illusory conjunctions

Mathey, Zagar, Doignon, and Seigneuric (2006) reported an inhibitory effect of syllabic neighbourhood in monosyllabic French words suggesting that syllable units mediate the access to lexical representations of monosyllabic stimuli. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of syllable units in monosyllabic stimuli. The illusory conjunction paradigm was used to examine perceptual groupings of letters. Experiment 1 showed that potential syllables in monosyllabic French words (e.g., BI in BICHE) affected the pattern of illusory conjunctions. Experiment 2 indicated that the perceptual parsing in monosyllabic items was due to syllable information and orthographic redundancy. The implications of the data are discussed for visual word recognition processes in an interactive activation model incorporating syllable units and connected adjacent letters (IAS; Mathey et al., 2006).     

Predicting stress patterns in an unpredictable stress language: The use of non-lexical sources of evidence for stress assignment in Russian

The main goal of this research was to examine how readers of Russian assign stress to disyllabic words. In particular, we tested the claim that the process of stress assignment in Russian can only be accomplished lexically. Eleven potential non-lexical sources of evidence for stress in Russian were examined in regression and factorial studies. In Study 1, onset complexity, coda complexity, the orthography of the first syllable (CVC1), of the second syllable (CVC2), and of the ending of the second syllable (VC2) were found to be probabilistically associated with stress in Russian disyllables. In Studies 2 and 3, it was shown that Russian speakers do use 3 of these cues (CVC1, CVC2, and VC2) when making stress-assignment decisions. These results provide evidence against the idea that the nature of stress in the Russian language is so unpredictable that stress assignment can only be accomplished lexically. These results also suggest that any successful model of stress assignment in Russian needs to contain mechanisms allowing these 3 orthographic cues to play a role in the stress-assignment process.     

An L1-script-transfer-effect fallacy: a rejoinder to Wang et al. (2003)

Do different L1 (first language) writing systems differentially affect word identification in English as a second language (ESL)? Wang, Koda, and Perfetti [Cognition 87 (2003) 129] answered yes by examining Chinese students with a logographic L1 background and Korean students with an alphabetic L1 background for their phonological and orthographic processing skills on English word identification. Such a conclusion is premature, however. We propose that the L1 phonological system (rather than the L1 writing system) of the learner largely accounts for cognitive processes in learning to read a second language (L2).     

Sublexical and morphological information in speech processing

Three experiments investigated the impact of syllabic boundary information and of morphological structure on performance in a sequence-monitoring task. In sequence monitoring, participants detect pre-specified sequences of phonemes in spoken carrier words. Sequences corresponded to the first syllable of the carrier word, to its first morpheme, or simultaneously to both. The data from Experiments 1 and 2, using different variants of the monitoring task, showed a strong impact of syllable boundary cues on monitoring latencies. An effect of morphological match between targets and carrier words was also evident. Experiment 3, in which parts of the spoken carrier words were cross-spliced, revealed that syllabic boundary information takes precedence over morphological information. The results are in line with an early process of speech processing, in which syllabic cues are used to aid lexical access. The morphological effect is better understood as a later, probably lexical, contribution of morphological decomposition to monitoring performance.     

Early perception of written syllables in French: An event-related potential study

The present study examined whether written syllable units are perceived in first steps of letter string processing. An illusory conjunction experiment was conducted while event-related potentials were recorded. Colored pseudowords were presented such that there was a match or mismatch between the syllable boundaries and the color boundaries. The results showed that congruent stimuli for which the syllable and color boundaries coincided produced a greater positive-going waveform than incongruent stimuli for which the syllable and color boundaries did not coincide. This syllable–color congruency effect was observed to occur both prior to 100 ms, and in a time window commencing at 150 ms. This finding suggests that syllable units are perceived in the initial steps of French visual word processing. Moreover, this study underlines the specificity of the illusory conjunction paradigm as a relevant and powerful tool of investigation of sublexical units that are automatically evoked from word perception.     

Temporal organization of syllables in paced and unpaced speech in children and adolescents who stutter

PurposeSpeaking with an external rhythm has a tremendous fluency-enhancing effect in people who stutter. The aim of the present study is to examine whether syllabic timing related to articulatory timing (c-center) would differ between children and adolescents who stutter and a matched control group in an unpaced vs. a paced condition.MethodsWe recorded 48 German-speaking children and adolescents who stutter and a matched control group reading monosyllabic words with and without a metronome (unpaced and paced condition). Analyses were conducted on four minimal pairs that differed in onset complexity (simple vs. complex). The following acoustic correlates of a c-center effect were analyzed: vowel and consonant compression, acoustic intervals (time from c-center, left-edge, and right-edge to an anchor-point), and relative standard deviations of these intervals.ResultsBoth groups show acoustic correlates of a c-center effect (consonant compression, vowel compression, c-center organization, and more stable c-center intervals), independently of condition. However, the group who stutters had a more pronounced consonant compression effect. The metronome did not significantly affect syllabic organization but interval stability improved in the paced condition in both groups.ConclusionChildren and adolescents who stutter and matched controls have a similar syllable organization, related to articulatory timing, regardless of paced or unpaced speech. However, consonant onset timing differs between the group who stutters and the control group; this is a promising basis for conducting an articulatory study in which articulatory (gestural) timing can be examined in more detail.     

The bigram trough hypothesis and the syllable number effect in lexical decision

There has been an increasing volume of evidence supporting the role of the syllable in various word processing tasks. It has, however, been suggested that syllable effects may be caused by orthographic redundancy. In particular, it has been proposed that the presence of bigram troughs at syllable boundaries cause what are seen as syllable effects. We investigated the bigram trough hypothesis as an explanation of the number of syllables effect for lexical decision in five-letter words and nonwords from the British Lexicon Project. The number of syllables made a significant contribution to prediction of lexical decision times along with word frequency and orthographic similarity. The presence of a bigram trough did not. For nonwords, the number of syllables made a significant contribution to prediction of lexical decision times only for nonwords with relatively long decision times. The presence of a bigram trough made no contribution. The evidence presented suggests that the bigram trough cannot be an explanation of the syllable number effect in lexical decision. A comparison of the results from words and nonwords is interpreted as providing some support for dual-route models of reading.