Efectos de la complejidad de la estructura silábica en tareas de lectura de sílabas aisladas

Résumé

This research tested a prediction drawn from MacKay's (1987) theory of phonological encoding: syllables starting with a consonant cluster should show longer naming latencies than syllables starting with a singleton. This prediction was supported in experiment 1, using a standard naming task in which subjects read nonsense syllables from print. A syllable frequency effect was also found. The following experiments used varieties of the naming task in order to isolate the locus of the origin of this effect of syllable structural complexity. Experiment 2 showed that the effect vanishes when subjects are allowed ample time to prepare their vocal response before the reaction signal (prepared naming), thus ruling out an articulatory origin. Experiments 3 and 4 manipulated the time interval that subjects were allowed to prepare their responses, and found that the effect of syllable frequency vanishes at shorter preparation intervals than the structural complexity effect. This suggests that the latter arises in final but prearticulatory processing stages, possibly during phonological encoding. Possible alternative explanations are discussed, as well as the theoretical implications of these results in relation to current models of language production