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Syllable Monitoring in Internally and Externally Generated English Words

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Abstract

The ability of English speakers to monitor internally and externally generated words for syllables was investigated in this paper. An internal speech monitoring task required participants to silently generate a carrier word on hearing a semantically related prompt word (e.g., reveal—divulge). These productions were monitored for prespecified target strings that were either a syllable match (e.g., /dai/), a syllable mismatch (e.g., /daiv/), or unrelated (e.g., /hju:/) to the initial syllable of the word. In all three experiments the longer target sequence was monitored for faster. However, this tendency reached significance only when the longer string also matched a syllable in the carrier word. External speech versions of each experiment were run that yielded a similar influence of syllabicity but only when the syllable match string also had a closed structure. It was concluded that any influence of syllabicity found using either task reflected the properties of a shared perception-based monitoring system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Jane L. Morgan & Linda R. Wheeldon

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  1. Jane L. Morgan
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  2. Linda R. Wheeldon
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Morgan, J.L., Wheeldon, L.R. Syllable Monitoring in Internally and Externally Generated English Words. J Psycholinguist Res 32, 269–296 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023591518131

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