Syllabic segmentation and literacy

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Abstract
A total of 40 unschooled Portuguese adults, either illiterates or ex-illiterates, were presented auditorily with short sentences and asked to detect the occurrence of a word initiated by a specified syllable-sized target. The target was either CV or CVC, and the target-bearing word was initiated by either a CV or a CVC syllable. The dependent variable was the number of correct detections. Ex-illiterates performed better than illiterates. There was a significant interaction between target type and word structure: Detections were more numerous when the target coincided with the first syllable of the target-bearing word than when it did not. This effect is similar to the one obtained by Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, and Segui (1981) in a reaction-time study with French literate subjects, and shows evidence of a syllabification procedure. The fact that this syllable effect is obtained with illiterate subjects, regardless of their overall performance, suggests that the development of a syllabification procedure in speech processing depends primarily on informal experience with the language rather than on formal instruction.