Phonotactic constraints help to overcome effects of schwa deletion in French.

In a crossmodal priming experiment, visual targets (e.g. RENARD, 'fox') were auditorily primed by either an intact [see text] 'the fox' or reduced form [see text] 'the fox' of the word. When schwa deletion gave rise to an initial cluster that respected the phonotactic constraints of French (e.g. [lapluz] 'the lawn' in which /pl/ is a legal word beginning in French), there was a processing cost for the targets primed by the reduced form of the word compared to intact primes (e.g. [see text] 'the lawn'). However, when schwa deletion produced an initial cluster that violated the phonotactic constraints of French (e.g. [see text], where /Rn/ is not allowed as a word beginning), there was no penalty for targets primed by reduced compared to intact forms of the word. Assuming that listeners change their phonemic percept when confronted with phonotactically illegal sequences (Segui, Frauenfelder, & Hallé, 2001), phonotactic constraints may help to restore the deleted schwa in sequences like le renard [see text] in French.

French Version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test, Part I: Normative Data and Guidelines for Error Scoring.

OBJECTIVE: The Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT) measures prepotent response inhibition, useful to assess inhibition deficit in a variety of clinical conditions. Despite its extensive use by numerous clinical and research groups in France, normative data for the HSCT are not yet available for French speakers. METHOD: A French version of the HCST was administered to a sample of 426 healthy community-dwelling French speaking adults (20-87 years of age). Normative data were calculated using a regression-based approach. RESULTS: Regression analyses indicated that both age and education were associated with response latency and number of errors in the inhibition condition. Equations to calculate Z scores are provided for clinical use. In addition, we provided a clear guideline for the error scoring of the inhibition condition by establishing a corpus of errors adjusted for the linguistic and cultural realities of the French population. Using this guideline, a good inter-rater reliability was observed. Because of the restricted ranges of response latency and number of errors in the automatic condition, the relationship between these scores and demographic factors was not explored. By consequence, no norms were proposed for this condition. CONCLUSIONS: We provide normative data of a French version of the HSCT for adults and elderly patients. These normative data obtained will be extremely useful for clinical practice and research purposes.