THE SYLLABLES ROLE IN SPEECH PRODUCTION - ARE SYLLABLES CHUNKS, SCHEMAS, OR BOTH

Two experiments, one using the masked priming technique combined with very brief prime exposures and the other using a new technique, the in duction technique, were run in order to investigate the role of syllab ic structure in speech production. Experiment 1 (masked priming) showe d no effect when primes shared only the abstract syllabic structure wi thout the phonological content, whereas the same picture stimuli produ ced a syllabic priming effect in Ferrand, Segui, and Grainger (1996, E xperiment 4) when primes corresponded to full syllables. In contrast, the results of Experiment 2 (induction) showed that picture naming lat encies were significantly faster when subjects had first read aloud a set of words with the same syllabic structure than when these words di d not share the syllabic structure with the picture target. This resul t was also observed when the set was composed of nonwords. These resul ts demonstrate that the abstract syllabic structure (independently of its phonological content) plays an important role in speech production depending on the task used.