Syllabification of spoken words has been largely used to define syllabic properties of written words, such as the number of syllables or syllabic boundaries. By contrast, some authors proposed that the functional structure of written words stems from visuo-orthographic features rather than from the transposition of phonological structure into the…

This study investigated whether and to what extent phonemic abilities of young readers (Grade 5) influence syllabic effects in reading. More precisely, the syllable congruency effect was tested in the lexical decision task combined with masked priming in eleven-year-old children. Target words were preceded by a pseudo-word prime sharing the first…

The processes and the cues determining the orthographic structure of polysyllabic words remain far from clear. In the present study, we investigated the role of letter category (consonant vs. vowels) in the perceptual organization of letter strings. In the syllabic counting task, participants were presented with written words matched for the…