Bruno De Cara

Similarity relations among spoken words: The special status of rimes in English

This paper presents an analysis of the distribution of phonological similarity relations among monosyllabic spoken words in English. It differs from classical analyses of phonological neighborhood density (e.g., Luce & Pisoni, 1998) by assuming that not all phonological neighbors are equal. Rather, it is assumed that the phonological lexicon has psycholinguistic structure. Accordingly, in addition to considering thenumber of phonological neighbors for any given word, it becomes important to consider thenature of these neighbors. If one type of neighbor is more dominant, neighborhood density effects may reflect levels of segmental representation other than the phoneme, particularly prior to literacy. Statistical analyses of the nature of phonological neighborhoods in terms ofrime neighbors (e.g.,hat/cat),consonant neighbors (e.g.,hat/hit), andlead neighbors (e.g.,hat/ham) were thus performed for all monosyllabic words in the Celex corpus (4,086 words). Our results show that most phonological neighbors are rime neighbors (e.g.,hat/cat) in English. Similar patterns were found when a corpus of words for which age-of-acquisition ratings were available was analyzed. The resultant database can be used as a tool for controlling and selecting stimuli when the role of lexical neighborhoods in phonological development and speech processing is examined.

Phonological neighbourhood density : effects in a rhyme awareness task in five-year-old children*

Phonological awareness skills are critical for reading acquisition, yet relatively little is known about the origins of phonological awareness. This study investigates one plausible source of the emergence of phonological awareness, phonological neighbourhood density. As vocabulary grows, the number of similar-sounding words in the childs mental lexicon increases. This could create developmental pressure to develop awareness of sub-units within words such as syllables, rhymes and phonemes. If this is the case, then neighbourhood density effects should be discernible in phonological awareness tasks. Children should be more successful in these tasks with words from dense phonological neighbourhoods, as they should show greater awareness of sub-units within these words. We investigated this hypothesis in a group of 48 five-year-old children, most of whom were pre-readers. The five-year-olds with a high vocabulary age showed neighbourhood density effects in a rhyme oddity task, but five-year-olds with lower vocabulary ages did not. This suggests that vocabulary acquisition and consequent neighbourhood density effects are indeed one source of the emergence of phonological awareness skills in pre-readers.

Do Consonant Sonority and Status Influence Syllable-Based Segmentation Strategies in a Visual Letter Detection Task? Developmental Evidence in French Children.

This article queries whether consonant sonority (sonorant vs. obstruent) and status (coda vs. onset) within intervocalic clusters influence syllable-based segmentation strategies. We used a modified version of the illusory conjunction paradigm to test whether French beginning, intermediate, and advanced readers were sensitive to an optimal “sonorant coda–obstruent onset” sonority profile within the syllable boundaries as a cue for a syllable-based segmentation. Data showed that children used a syllable-based segmentation that improved with reading skills and age. The results are discussed to support that the visual letter detection within pseudowords primarily and early relies on acoustic-phonetic cues within the syllable boundaries, whereas the syllable effect seems to be developmentally constrained by reading skills and age.

Normes d’âge d’acquisition objectif des mots et recherche de prédicteurs : importance du choix de la base de fréquence lexicale

L’objectif premier de ce travail etait de caracteriser les images proposees par Bonin, Peereman, Malardier, Meot et Chalard (2003) en termes d’âge d’acquisition (AoA) objectif, recueilli aupres d’enfants âges de 2 : 6 a 10 : 11 ans. (http :// www. unice. fr/ LPEQ/ base_ AoA/ aoa_ intro. php). La comparaison avec les normes en francais des images de Snodgrass et Vanderwart (1980) montre que les nouvelles images correspondent, en moyenne, a des mots plus rares et d’AoA plus tardif. Cependant, correlations et regressions multiples indiquent que les memes facteurs sont impliques dans l’emergence de l’AoA (variabilite d’imagerie et frequence lexicale) a travers les deux jeux d’images. De plus, quelle que soit la base d’images, l’AoA est significativement mieux correle et specifiquement predit par les frequences lexicales du vocabulaire de l’enfant (NOVLEX, MANULEX) que par les frequences calculees sur des corpus du vocabulaire de l’adulte (BRULEX, LEXIQUE).

Probing the link between cognitive control and lexical selection in monolingual speakers

Resume La possible difference de performance entre les monolingues et les bilingues dans des tâches de controle cognitif est actuellement sujette a debat. Les bilingues doivent constamment alterner et discriminer entre leurs deux langues. Ce processus supplementaire de discrimination, absent chez les monolingues, produirait une amelioration generale des habiletes de controle cognitif. Nous avons examine une prediction directement deduite de cette hypothese generale. Si il y a effectivement un lien general entre processus generiques de selection de reponse et selection de mots, alors les variations naturellement presentes au sein d’une population monolingue des capacites de discrimination de reponse devraient etre liees a la capacite a choisir des mots. Nous avons teste une large cohorte d’enfants monolingues dans la tâche non linguistique de Simon et dans une tâche de production de mots a partir de dessins. La difficulte de selection a ete manipulee dans chaque tâche. Nous avons observe de clairs effets de cette difficulte au sein de chaque tâche, mais pas de relation entre eux au niveau individuel. Cette absence d’effet significatif ne fournit pas d’arguments en faveur de l’hypothese testee. Elle motive toutefois une discussion exploratoire des processus exacts qui, chez le locuteur bilingue, pourraient ameliorer le controle cognitif.

Is Syllable Segmentation Developmentally Constrained by Consonant Sonority within Syllable Boundaries in Silent Reading? Evidence in French Children.

There is agreement that French typically reading children use syllable-sized units to segment words. Although the statistical properties of the initial syllables or the clusters within syllable boundaries seem to be crucial for syllable segmentation, little is known about the role of consonant sonority in silent reading. In two experiments that used audio-visual and visual pseudoword recognition tasks with 300 French typically developing children, we showed a progressive increase in the use of syllable segmentation from the first through fifth years of reading instruction. The children were influenced both by an optimal ‘sonorant coda–obstruent onset’ sonority profile and by the individual position-dependent consonant sonority within syllable boundaries. Orthographic and phonological statistical properties did not clearly modulate the response patterns. We provide innovative data to help further understand the developmental course of the use of syllable segmentation as determined by sonority. We discuss our results in the light of linguistic principles.

Normes de fréquence cumulée et trajectoire fréquentielle comme prédicteurs de l’âge d’acquisition

L’objectif premier de ce travail etait de caracteriser les images (et mots correspondants) proposees par Bonin, Peereman, Malardier, Meot et Chalard (2003) en termes de frequence cumulee et trajectoire frequentielle, selon le modele utilise par Bonin, Barry, Meot et Chalard (2004) pour caracteriser les images de Snodgrass et Vanderwart (1980). Correlations et regressions multiples revelent que la frequence cumulee et la trajectoire frequentielle sont les principaux predicteurs de l’âge d’acquisition (AoA) estime ou objectif. La comparaison des deux jeux d’images renforce l’idee selon laquelle ces facteurs, construits objectifs puisque simplement deduits des frequences lexicales de l’adulte (LEXIQUE) et de l’enfant (MANULEX), sont des candidats valides pour remplacer la frequence lexicale et l’AoA. Leur utilisation permet alors de d’echapper aux biais des etudes comportementales denonces par Zevin et Seidenberg (2002) portant sur le choix de la frequence lexicale et l’utilisation de l’AoA, variable de performance. En particulier, frequence cumulee et trajectoire frequentielle ne sont pas correlees. L’implication theorique et methodologique de ces constatations est discutee dans cet article.