Coda optimization in the segmentation of English polysyllabic letter-strings

A word-spotting experiment is reported whereby participants determined whether a polysyllabic pseudoword began with a real word or not. All target words ended in a single consonant (e.g., slam) which either did or did not form a complex coda with the consonant that followed it. When it did (e.g., th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inExperimental psychology Vol. 61; no. 6; p. 488
Main Authors Taft, Marcus, Álvarez, Carlos J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Germany 2014
Subjects
Humans
Language
Linguistics
Mental Processes
Vocabulary
polysyllabic words
visual word segmentation
lexical processing
word recognition
syllables
word spotting
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Summary:A word-spotting experiment is reported whereby participants determined whether a polysyllabic pseudoword began with a real word or not. All target words ended in a single consonant (e.g., slam) which either did or did not form a complex coda with the consonant that followed it. When it did (e.g., the mp of slampora), target detection was harder than when the target was followed by a vowel (e.g., slamorpa). When it did not (e.g., the mc of slamcora), target detection was easier. These results demonstrate a bias toward maximization of the coda when segmenting a polysyllabic letter-string which is argued to reflect the way in which polysyllabic words are represented in the mental lexicon.
ISSN:2190-5142
DOI:10.1027/1618-3169/a000266