Date of Award

2008

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Program

Psychology

Supervisor

Dr. Debra Jared

Second Advisor

Dr. Marc Joanisse

Abstract

The goal of the current study was to investigate whether readers recover phonological syllables when reading in English, and specifically, whether syllable effects are more likely to occur when readers process words that have clear syllable boundaries than those that do not have clear syllable boundaries. A syllable congruency paradigm was used in which disyllabic words were presented in two colours that either matched (congruent) or mismatched (incongruent) the syllable boundary. Behavioural data from naming and lexical decision found no evidence of syllable congruency effects. In an event-related potential experiment, syllable congruency effects were found for words with clear marking in the N200, for words with no clear marking in the Pl00, and for all words in the N400. Lexicality effects were also found in these components. The role of the phonological syllable in English visual word recognition will be discussed.

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