Effect of syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length

The concept of syllabic neighbours (words sharing the same first syllable) is central in the interpretive framework of syllabic effects in visual word recognition. However, the definition of this concept remains surprisingly vague, so it is not clear whether or not syllabic competition is driven by words of similar syllabic length. The present study aimed to refine the definition by investigating the effect of higher-frequency syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length (similar syllabic length to the target words vs. any syllabic length). In both standard and go/no-go lexical decision tasks, the data showed that increasing the number of higher-frequency syllabic neighbours had an influence only when this number was computed from words of the same syllabic length as the target. Syllabic neighbours may therefore be considered as words sharing the first syllable and the total number of syllables with the target. Implications for accounts of syllable neighbourhood effects are discussed.