Sequence detection in pseudowords in French: Where is the syllable effect?

Abstract

In two experiments, French speakers detected cv or cvc sequences at the beginning of disyllabic pseudowords varying in syllable structure and pivotal consonant. Overall, both studies failed to replicate the crossover interaction that has been previously observed in French by Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder and Seguí (1981). In both experiments, latencies were shorter to cv than to cvc targets and this effect of target length was generally smaller for cvc cv than for cv cv carriers. However, a clear crossover interaction was observed for liquid pivotal consonants under target-blocking conditions, and especially for slow participants. A third experiment collected phonemegating data on the same pseudowords to obtain estimates of the duration of the initial phonemes. Regression analyses showed that phoneme duration accounted for a large proportion of the variance for cvc target detection, suggesting that participants were reacting rather directly to phonemic throughput. These findings argue against the hypothesis of an early syllabic classification mechanism in the perception of speech.