Orthographic and morphemic effects in the written syllable counting task

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Psychology
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• A recent hypothesis suggests that the arrangement of letters into consonant-vowel (CV) patterns influences word orthography.
• The role of morphological structure in word processing is well-documented, but its interaction with phonotactic constraints is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the extent to which word's morphological structure modulates the influence of the CV pattern.
• To examine the interplay between phonotactic constraints (CV pattern) and morphological boundaries in a reading task.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed a syllable counting task on written words and pseudowords.
• Stimuli were controlled for syllable count and categorized as hiatus words (fewer vowel clusters than syllables) or control words.
• The presence of a morphemic boundary within hiatus stimuli was manipulated.

Main Results:

• Participants exhibited slower reaction times and reduced accuracy for hiatus words compared to control words.
• This 'hiatus effect' persisted even when a morphemic boundary was present within the hiatus.
• The CV pattern's influence on performance was stronger than that of morphological structure.

Conclusions:

• The findings indicate that the CV pattern exerts a dominant influence on word processing during syllable counting.
• Morphological structure has a less pronounced effect compared to phonotactic constraints imposed by the CV pattern.
• This research contributes to understanding the hierarchical nature of linguistic processing in reading.