Syllabic length effect in Spanish evidence from adult readers

Abstract

Dual route theories of reading assume the existence of two paths: the lexical route, which operates with complete words and allows direct access from spelling to semantics and speech; and, the sublexic route, which operates in an analytical way converting, by correspondence rules, graphemes into phonemes. Numerous research reported that the length effect is an important aspect for the study of the processes that underlie word recognition. The objective of the present study is to examine the length effect in reaction times of participants without alterations of reading. A group of 84 university students were evaluated with a task of word and nonword reading aloud. We carried out analysis per subject (F1) and per stimulus (F2) that showed statistically significant length effect and, in addition, a significant interaction with the type of stimulus was observed. These findings constitute convergent evidence with the assumption of the existence of two reading mechanisms in transparent spelling languages ​​such as Spanish.