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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology
Published on: June 29, 2021
Differential processing of consonants and vowels in lexical access through reading
Boris New1, Verónica Araújo, Thierry Nazzi
1Laboratoire de Psychologie et de Neurosciences Cognitives (CNRS UMR 8189), Université Paris Descartes, Boulogne-Billancourt, France. boris.new@parisdescartes.fr
Abstract:
Do consonants and vowels have the same importance during reading? Recently, it has been proposed that consonants play a more important role than vowels for language acquisition and adult speech processing. This proposal has started receiving developmental support from studies showing that infants are better at processing specific consonantal than vocalic information while learning new words. This proposal also received support from adult speech processing. In our study, we directly investigated the relative contributions of consonants and vowels to lexical access while reading by using a visual masked-priming lexical decision task. Test items were presented following four different primes: identity (e.g., for the word joli, joli), unrelated (vabu), consonant-related (jalu), and vowel-related (vobi). Priming was found for the identity and consonant-related conditions, but not for the vowel-related condition. These results establish the privileged role of consonants during lexical access while reading.
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