Sublexical frequency measures and sonority: What contributes to syllable segmentation in silent reading in French dyslexic children?

International audienceIn French, the syllableis an early and robust prelexical and segmental unit duringreading acquisition. But is syllable segmentation possiblewhen no reliable statistical and distributional information isavailable? We proposed that the sonority might be anotherreliable source for syllable segmentation. We studied whetherdyslexic children compared with chronological-age matchedand reading-level matched controls are sensitive to universalsonority-related markedness within the syllable boundary. Weused an adapted version of the illusory conjunction paradigm.The statistical and distributional properties were null or quasinull around and within the syllable boundary, while sonorityrelated markedness was manipulated along a continuum fromlegal, unmarked clusters to illegal, marked ones. Our resultsshow that syllable segmentation strategies primarily dependon sonority-related markedness. As markedness decreases,children better detect the syllable boundaries, while asmarkedness increases, children promote syllable onsets. This istrue with dyslexic children and controls. While this universalphonological sensitivity does not depend on reading level,syllable segmentation abilities develop with reading experience