Syllabic effects in word processing: Evidence from the structural induction paradigm

Spoken words have a rich structural organization in memory, consisting of s yllabic and subsyllabic representations. A phoneme monitoring paradigm, in which the target phoneme occurs more frequently in one syllabic position th an another (e.g., onset of the 2nd syllable vs. the coda of the Ist syllabl e: neu-tral vs, nut-meg; C. Pallier, N. Sebastian-Galles, T. Felguera, A. C hristophe, & J. Mehler, 1993) was used to explore the formation of syllabic structure during word processing. Experiment 2 investigated how a recognit ion system that uses syllabic structure processes words with unclear syllab le boundaries (e.g., pa-lace or pal-ace?). Two methodological issues were e xplored: The importance of a baseline condition for measuring effects of in duction (Experiment 1) and the form of the representation used in the induc tion paradigm (Experiment 3). Findings suggest that syllabic structure begi ns to form early in word processing, and they demonstrate the adequacy of t he induction procedure for measuring such processes.