Processing of syllable stress is functionally different from phoneme processing and does not profit from literacy acquisition.

ABSTRACT: Speech is characterized by phonemes and prosody. Neurocognitive evidence supports the separate processing of each type of information. Therefore, one might suggest individual development of both pathways. In this study, we examine literacy acquisition in middle childhood. Children become aware of the phonemes in speech at that time and refine phoneme processing when they acquire an alphabetic writing system. We test whether an enhanced sensitivity to phonemes in middle childhood extends to other aspects of the speech signal, such as prosody. To investigate prosodic processing, we used stress priming. Spoken stressed and unstressed syllables (primes) preceded spoken German words with stress on the first syllable (targets). We orthogonally varied stress overlap and phoneme overlap between th

SUBMITTER: Schild U 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4042081 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature