Traitement syllabique au cours de la reconnaissance de mots écrits chez des enfants dyslexiques, lecteurs en retard et normo-lecteurs de 11 ans

Pascale Colé (1) , Liliane Sprenger-Charolles (2)

1 LPE - UMR8581 - Laboratoire de psychologie expérimentale
2 LEAPLCE - Laboratoire d'études sur l'acquisition et la pathologie du langage chez l'enfant

Three groups of eleven-year-old children at different reading levels (normal readers, below average readers and dyslexics) were presented with a visual adaptation of the monitoring task by Mehler et al (1981). The children were required to detect a two or three letter target string at the initial position of a familiar or unfamiliar word. For example, target strings such as 'ga' or 'gar' had to be detected in the words 'garage' and 'garçon'. The target strings had either a CV or CVC structure which either matched or did not match the first syllable of the word. In normal readers a syllable compatibility effect (detection times were faster when the target corresponded to the first syllable of the word than when it did not) for unfamiliar words was observed. There was also a target length effect for familiar words, with two-letter targets strings responded to fastest. In contrast, for the below average readers the syllable compatibility effect was observed for familiar words, and the target length effect for unfamiliar words. In dyslexic readers a target length effect was found at all levels of word familiarity. The results indicated the following. Firstly, normal readers processed unfamiliar words phonologically, whereas familiar words were processed orthographically. Secondly, below average readers processed words phonologically irrespective of familiarity, but used syllabic units with familiar words and phonemes with unfamiliar words. Thirdly, dyslexic readers used a letter-by-letter strategy involving a visuo-orthographic procedure rather than a phonological one. A previous study established that the dyslexic children showed a poorer performance on both syllable and phoneme deletion tasks. Thus their letter-by-letter strategy might be explained by severe phonological deficits

Domaines: Linguistique; Psychologie

Pascale Colé, Liliane Sprenger-Charolles. Traitement syllabique au cours de la reconnaissance de mots écrits chez des enfants dyslexiques, lecteurs en retard et normo-lecteurs de 11 ans. Revue de Neuropsychologie, 1999, 4, pp.323-360. ⟨hal-00733596⟩