Abstract
The syllable as an activational unit in reading trisyllabic words. Several experiments in Spanish have found that the frequency of syllables influences visual word recognition. Most of these studies have employed disyllabic words and pseudowords. In the present paper we manipulated the frequency of the three syllables in trisyllabic words (trisyllabic words are more representative of the word length in Spanish) and pseudowords. Three experiments were carried out using a lexical decision task and a temporal separation technique. The data showed that the syllable is a processing unit, also in long stimuli. In addition, our results supported an activational model incorporating a syllabic level and with sequential-type properties.
