Abstract

In the last years, research in reading has been focusing on polysyllabic word and non-word reading, with great interest in simulating these processes. But what happens when we move from monosyllabic units to polysyllabic units? When we deal with polysyllabic stimuli, we need to consider at least three new issues: stress assignment, syllable units, and the relationship between stress and syllable/phonemes. These are key arguments for the theory of reading: if we want to simulate polysyllabic word reading, we have to model all these issues. In the present review, all the above arguments - stress assignment, syllable units, and the relationship between stress and syllable/phonemes - will be discussed with relation to some recent computational models. The results show that the models of reading pay little attention to the key arguments concerning polysyllabic units, which are more complex than their current implementations.