Stress assignment to Italian polysyllabic words is unpredictable, because stress is neither marked nor predicted by rule. Stress assignment, especially to low frequency words, has been reported to be a function of stress dominance and stress neighbourhood. Two experiments investigate stress assignment in sixth-grade, skilled and dyslexic, readers.…

Italian developmental dyslexic readers show a striking length effect and have been hypothesised to rely mostly on nonlexical reading. Our experiments tested this hypothesis by assessing whether or not the deficit underlying dyslexia is specific to lexical reading. The effects of lexicality, word frequency and length were investigated in the same…

A previous study reported that, similar to young and adult skilled readers, Italian developmental dyslexics read pseudowords made up of a root and a derivational suffix faster and more accurately than simple pseudowords. Unlike skilled readers, only dyslexic and reading-matched younger children benefited from morphological structure in reading…

The reading skills of a girl with Williams Syndrome are assessed by a timed word-naming task. To test the efficiency of lexical and nonlexical reading, we considered four marker effects: Lexicality (better reading of words than nonwords), frequency (better reading of high than low frequency words), length (better reading of short than long words),…

The present study investigated the involvement of lexical knowledge in pseudoword reading by Italian children aged 8-10. In both lexical decision and reading aloud tasks, inhibitory effects were found on pseudowords derived from high-frequency words in comparison to pseudowords derived from low-frequency words. A group of adult readers showed…

Italian dyslexic children are characterized by a pervasive reading speed deficit, with relatively preserved accuracy. This pattern has been associated with predominant use of the nonlexical reading procedure. However, there is no evidence of a deficit in the lexical route of Italian dyslexics. We investigated both lexical and nonlexical reading…