The processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition: Typicality effects and orthographic correlates

Joanne Arciuli, Linda Cupples

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

108 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Many studies that have examined reading at the single-word level have been restricted to the processing of monosyllabic stimuli, and, as a result, lexical stress has not been widely investigated. In the experiments reported here, we used disyllabic words and nonwords to investigate the processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found an effect of stress typicality in naming and lexical decision. Typically stressed words (trochaic nouns and iambic verbs) elicited fewer errors than atypically stressed words (iambic nouns and trochaic verbs). In Experiment 3, we carried out an analysis of 340 word endings and found clear orthographic correlates of both grammatical category and lexical stress in word endings. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that readers are sensitive to these cues in their processing of nonwords during two tasks: sentence construction and stress assignment. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to psycholinguistic models of single-word reading.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)920-948
Number of pages29
JournalQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Volume59
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2006
Externally publishedYes

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