Roles of consonant status and sonority in printed syllable processing: Evidence from illusory conjunction and audio-visual recognition tasks in French adults

The paper investigates how French readers visually process consonant clusters between two syllables. First, we aimed at assessing whether skilled adults were sensitive to syllable-sized units. Second, we wondered whether syllable processing depended on linguistic characteristics of consonant clusters such as consonant status and sonority profile. Two visual recognition tasks were used: the classical illusory conjunction paradigm (Prinzmetal, Treiman & Rho, 1986) and an original audio-visual recognition tasks. The results showed that syllable-sized units were used in both tasks. However, sonority profile and consonant status modulated syllable processing whatever the task. Consonant clusters whose sonority profile was ‘sonorant coda-obstruent onset’ (e.g. ‘LP’ in ‘TOLPUDE’) was preferred to all other sonority profiles. These behavioural results were in line with linguistic principles according to which the best contact between two syllables lies on a peak in sonority at the end of the first syllable following by a drop in sonority at beginning of the subsequent one (e.g., Hooper, 1972 ; Clements, 1990).