The inhibitory effect of positional syllable frequency is a well-known phenomenon in visual word recognition: words with high-frequency syllables require extra time for deactivating the lexical syllabic neighbors. The inhibitory effect implies that a connection exists between graphemes, phonemes, the first syllable, and the phonological lexicon. However, experimental results of the first developmental stages of occurrence are scarce and inconclusive. A second- and fourth-grade sample of typical school readers participated in a lexical decision task containing high/low frequency words and high/low syllable frequency words. Our primary hypothesis was that the inhibitory effect would be found on both school grade groups. We did not predict significant differences in magnitude of effect between second- and fourth-grade participants. A general inhibitory effect was found, and separate analyses by school grade groups also indicated significant inhibitory effects. Furthermore, second- and fourth-grade children showed small sizes of the inhibitory effect, resembling the sizes found in adult normal readers. Our results suggest that Spanish readers reach a functional connection between syllables and words at an early stage. The straightforward theoretical implication is that the inhibitory effect relies heavily on the structural properties of the lexical access system that are acquired at an early age.

中文翻译：

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位置音节频率对西班牙二、四年级读者的抑制作用

位置音节频率的抑制作用是视觉单词识别中的一个众所周知的现象：具有高频音节的单词需要额外的时间来停用词汇音节邻居。抑制效应意味着字素、音素、第一个音节和语音词典之间存在联系。然而，发生的第一个发展阶段的实验结果是稀缺和不确定的。一个二年级和四年级的典型学校读者样本参与了一项包含高/低频率词和高/低音节频率词的词汇决策任务。我们的主要假设是在两个年级组都会发现抑制作用。我们没有预测二年级和四年级参与者之间影响大小的显着差异。发现了一般的抑制作用，并且学校年级组的单独分析也表明了显着的抑制作用。此外，二年级和四年级儿童的抑制效果很小，与成年正常读者的大小相似。我们的研究结果表明，西班牙读者在早期阶段就已经在音节和单词之间建立了功能联系。直接的理论含义是抑制效应在很大程度上依赖于在早期获得的词汇访问系统的结构特性。我们的研究结果表明，西班牙读者在早期阶段就已经在音节和单词之间建立了功能联系。直接的理论含义是抑制效应在很大程度上依赖于在早期获得的词汇访问系统的结构特性。我们的研究结果表明，西班牙读者在早期阶段就已经在音节和单词之间建立了功能联系。直接的理论含义是抑制效应在很大程度上依赖于在早期获得的词汇访问系统的结构特性。