Fratantonio, A. , Rappo, G. & Pepi, A.
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Palermo
Italian words can be stressed on penultimate syllables (last but one, es.: volare ) or on the antepenultimate (last but two, es: tenero). In both cases, stress assignment is not predictable by rules, but needs lexical look-up. Italian words with stress on the penultimate syllable are defined regular because the proportion of this words is much larger than words with stress on the antepenultimate syllable, defined irregular. In this study, over the stress regularity, words syllabic composition is of particular importance (assume particolare importanza). We set to investigate the influence (in terms of correct stress positioning) of different syllabic and stress structures during decoding of developmental dyslexics and good readers. The participants were 48 children (24 males and 24 females) attending third grade junior school (average was 8,1 years). They were selected from a sample of 200 pupils on the basis of their cognitive level and reading abilities. In particular, according to the decoding difficulties level, the subjects were distributed into two groups: 24 with dyslexia and 24 without reading decoding difficulties. The subjects decode target words, selected on the basis of frequency (high and low frequency) and different syllabic and stress structures: irregular stress (on the third last syllable) and structure of second-last syllable open (ending with vowel); regular stress (on the second-last syllable) and structure of second-last syllable open; regular stress an structure of second-last syllable close (ending with consonant). Both groups performance was worse in case of open second-last syllable regardless of regularity. Instead, close second-last syllable made it unlikely accentuation mistake. In particular, dyslexic children are influenced by stress and syllabic structure also in case of high frequency use lists of words, contrariwise fluent readers that always worse performance in case of low frequency words.