Reading response latencies in Spanish: effects of lexicality and frequency

DIFALCIS MICAELA; FERRERES ALDO; OSIADACZ NATALIA; ABUSAMRA VALERIA

Investigaciones sobre lectura

Asociación española de comprensión lectora

Lugar: Murcia; Año: 2018 p. 50 - 72

2340-8685

The aim of this work was to design and apply a test of reading words and non-words(PaNoPa) to study the response latencies in Spanish-speaking subjects. A singleprevious study had reported such effects but the test used did not control lexicalvariables (number and frequency of orthographic neighbors) or sublexical variables(frequency of bigram and initial phonemes) that are important for the correct analysis oflatencies. The study of effects of lexicality and frequency in control participants isrelevant for the discussion on the universality of psycholinguistic reading models andalso for the characterization of reading disorders due to brain lesions (acquired dyslexia)in Spanish-speaking subjects. With an exhaustively controlled test, reading latencieswere obtained in a sample of Spanish-speaking readers and an ANOVA analysis wascarried out by subject and by type of stimulus. The results showed significantly lowerlatencies for words with respect to non-words (lexicality effect) and for frequent wordsregarding infrequent words (frequency effect). A significant difference was also foundbetween the latencies of the infrequent words and the non-words. These findingsprovide evidence in favor of the existence of a lexical reading route in a transparentlanguage such as Spanish and provide a tool and data for the psycholinguistic study ofthe reading alterations of Spanish-speaking subjects with acquired dyslexia.