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In J. Hasenäcker & F. Domahs (Chairs), From segmentals to suprasegmentals in reading and writing [Symposium].; International audience

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International audience; Some recent studies in French have shown thatdyslexic children, who have phonological deficits,were surprisingly able to use phonological syllablesized units during online visual word processing.French dyslexic children were as sensitive as chronological age-matched and reading level-matchedchildren to phonotactic and statistical properties ofsyllables to access and segment words. This questions the nature of the phonological deficit: degraded phonological representations vs. impairedaccess to the phonological representations. To further determine whether – and how – French dyslexic children are able to use syllable-based reading strategies, we designed a lexical decision taskusing a visual masked priming paradigm whichallowed us investigating how: 1/ automatic isthe syllable activation as segmental and prelexicalunit; 2/ both the phonological frequency and orthographic co-occurrences of the initial segments ofwords influence a syllable-based lexical access; 3/the importance of phonologically-driven responsepatterns depend on the requirements of the task.Twenty-nine French children who exhibited thethree main dimensions of the phonological deficit and 58 typically developing school-aged children participated (chronological age-matched andreading level-matched controls). Our preliminary results (analysis in progress) are threefold: 1/dyslexic children show a syllable priming effect;2/ dyslexic children show the classical inhibitorysyllable frequency effect with high-frequency syllables; 3/ dyslexic children are sensitive to the orthographic co-occurrences of the initial bi- and trigrams. Our results point out that dyslexic childrenunexpectedly had “automatized” abilities to usesyllable-based reading strategies; their responsetimes were slightly slower – but as accurate – thanthose in chronological age-matched controls. Thesyllable-based segmentation and lexical access relyon hierarchically-ranked properties (phonologicalfrequency then orthographic co-occurrences). Wediscuss our results towards the validity of the hypothesis of a degraded access to the phonological representations in French children with developmentaldyslexia

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International audience; Previous studies conducted in French demonstrated that syllables are used as prelexical and segmental units in silent reading in skilled readers.However, most of these studies focused on the importance of statistical and distributional propertiesto account for the syllable effects. Besides, thesestudies were done with many foreign natives butrare studies focused on French language and onreading. Our aim was to explore how skilled readers segment printed (non)words when no reliablestatistical cues were available around – and within– the syllable boundary. We were interested in howthe sonority – a universal feature-like phonologicalelement – might be a reliable source for syllable segmentation. We tested 160 native French-speakingadults. We used disyllabic non-words with bigrams, trigrams and syllables with (quasi)null frequencies in initial positions in a revisited versionof a lexical decision task, in the sense that we focused on the reaction times of the participants toreject stimuli not belonging to French lexicon.Wemanipulated five sonority profiles (high-fall, lowfall, plateau, low-rise, high-rise) within the syllableboundaries along a continuum from legal to illegalclusters. An asterisk mark was inserted either in2nd, 3rd or 4th position of the non-word, generating a(n) (ill)-legal structure. Our results showthat French adults are sensitive to the optimalityof the sonority profiles and of the syllable structure to locate the syllable boundary. As illegality of the structure and of the sonority profile increased, French adults had higher reaction times toidentify a syllable boundary as illegal. These results show that the (quasi)absence of statistical anddistributional properties around and within thesyllable boundary did not prevent from segmenting syllabically.This also suggests that segmentation strategies of printed stimuli do not only depend on a strict statistical and distributional analysis but also on a universal phonological sensitivity based on sonority

International audience; Previous studies conducted in French demonstrated that syllables are used as prelexical and segmental units in silent reading in skilled readers. However, most of these studies focused on the importance of statistical and distributional properties to account for the syllable effects. Our aim was to explore how skilled readers segment printed (pseudo)words when no reliable statistical cues were available around – and within – the syllable boundary. We were interested in how the sonority – a universal feature-like phonological element – might be a reliable source for syllable segmentation. We tested 164 native French-speaking adults with no bilingualism. We used pseudowords in two versions of the classical illusory conjunction paradigm: one classical presentation and one consisted of playing a white noise while the pseudoword displayed. We selected disyllabic pseudowords with bigrams, trigrams and syllables with (quasi) null frequencies in initial positions (first three letters including the syllable boundary). We manipulated five sonority profiles (i.e., high-fall, low-fall, plateau, low-rise, high-rise) within the syllable boundaries along a continuum from legal to illegal clusters. Our results show that French adults were sensitive to the optimality of the sonority profiles to locate the syllable boundary in both experiments; as illegality decreased, French adults better detected the syllable boundaries. We also found that the (quasi) absence of statistical and distributional properties around and within the syllable boundary did not prevent from segmenting syllabically. Moreover, the white noise which aimed at disrupting the possible retrieval of the acoustic-phonetic properties of the sonority did not influence the sonority-based segmentation strategies. Our results also suggest that segmentation strategies of printed stimuli do not only depend on a strict statistical and distributional analysis but also on a universal phonological sensitivity based on sonority.

International audience; Our study focused on the nature and the origin of reading disorders in French dyslexic children. Nowadays, two leading theories coexist: one claims that dyslexic children would have degraded phonological representations while the other one proposes difficulties to access them. We were interested in how the phonological representation of the syllable could be used and accessed in French dyslexic children. Ten French dyslexic children with phonological disorders compared to twenty controls (chronological age and reading level) completed two tasks with or without lexical access: a visual masked priming paradigm in a lexical decision task and a visual syllable detection task. Both tasks allowed us to study whether the syllable is a pre-lexical and segmental reading unit in dyslexic children. We considered as crucial factors the initial phonological and orthographic syllable frequency, the lexical frequency and the syllable structure to select words, and the reading level. Our results showed that they use syllables as pre-lexical and segmental units as normal-readers did. But sensitivity to syllables appears later in dyslexic children. As reading experience increases, speed and accuracy improve toward the use of a syllable-based processing. Then, the initial – phonological – syllable frequency has facilitatory effects in reading level-matched controls. But it has inhibitory effects in chronological age-matched controls and, to a lesser extent, in dyslexic children in the task that required a lexical access. However, the initial syllable frequency remains facilitative in the non-lexical task. Our results showed that while dyslexic children were slower, their accuracy and sensitivity to statistical factors were as close as those found in normal-readers. We discuss our results toward the hypothesis that some French dyslexic children might have well-specified phonological syllable representations but degraded – or disrupted – access to them.

International audience; In French, the syllable is an early and robust prelexical and segmental unit during reading acquisition. However, most of the research dedicated to the role of the syllables in silent reading focused on its statistical and distributional properties to account for the syllable effects. But is syllable segmentation possible when no reliable statistical and distributional information is available? We proposed that the sonority – a universal phonological element – might be another source for syllable segmentation even in children with a phonological deficit. We therefore studied whether dyslexic children (DY) compared with chronological age-matched (CA) and reading level-matched controls (RL) are sensitive to universal sonority-related markedness within the syllable boundary. Forty-five French-speaking children participated. We used an adapted version of the illusory conjunction paradigm with disyllabic pseudowords (the black-colored target-letter preceded the bicolored pseudoword). The statistical and distributional properties were null or quasi-null around and within the syllable boundary, while sonority-related markedness was manipulated along a continuum from legal, unmarked clusters (e.g., lv) to illegal, marked ones (e.g., jr). Our results show that syllable segmentation strategies depend on sonority-related markedness. As markedness decreases, children better detect the syllable boundaries (lv > jr), while as markedness increases, children promote syllable onsets (jr > lv). This is true with DY children and controls. These results suggest that 1) sonority (co-)contributes to the syllable segmentation; 2) DY children have intact sensitivity to universal phonological restrictions on syllable boundaries; however, DY children are slower than controls. While this universal phonological sensitivity does not depend on reading level, syllable segmentation develops with reading experience (CA = DY > RL).

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International audience; Recent studies have suggested that the phonological deficit in dyslexic children might not be due to degraded phonological representations but to difficulties in accessing them. Indeed, some studies in French have shown that dyslexic children may be able to use phonological syllable-sized units in silent reading. However, evidence remains scarce and not clear-cut about the contribution of statistical and structural properties on their use of syllables.

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