Phonological biases in lexical access in French and German: Data from a familiar word-recognition conflict task

Abstract

Consonants have been proposed to be more important than vowels in lexical processes (i.e., C-bias). This study investigated the existence and strength of the C-bias using a familiar word recognition conflict task, in which recognition takes place in the context of a conflict between consonantal and vocalic information. This was evaluated using eye-tracking in two linguistic populations (French and German) and two age groups (adults and 24-month-old toddlers). The experiment tested the recognition of a target object among two familiar objects presented on a screen. In the control condition, the auditory stimulus corresponded to one of the objects presented. In the conflict condition, the stimulus differed from the name of one of the objects by a consonant and from the other by a vowel. In the control condition, word recognition was found in all groups. In the conflict condition, contrary to our predictions, we failed to find evidence of a C-bias in both French- and German-speaking participants, at both ages. Rather, the analyses revealed phonological similarity effects on participants’ lexical access, which varied across languages but were similar across ages. In French, word recognition was sensitive to phonological distance, with a looking preference for the familiar words with less feature changes from the mispronounced words. In German, word recognition was sensitive to the rhyme, with a looking preference for the familiar words rhyming with the mispronounced words. We discuss these findings in terms of task-specific effects and speculate about why a C-bias was not elicited in the current study.