Front Psychol. 2026 May 18;17:1757864. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1757864. eCollection 2026.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Numerous studies have shown that consonants play a more crucial role than vowels in lexical recognition and learning, a phenomenon known as the C-Bias or C-advantage. While traditionally considered universal, recent findings suggest it may depend on language-specific phonotactic properties. This study examines whether the C-Bias is modulated by phonotactic constraints in Spanish, where vowels may have a discriminative advantage due to their distinctiveness.
METHODS: Seventy-seven native Spanish-speaking university students completed a Cross-Situational Word Learning task with pseudowords in two syllabic structures: monosyllabic (CVC) and disyllabic (CVCV).
RESULTS: The results revealed a vowel bias in monosyllabic pseudowords and a partial consonant bias in disyllabic pseudowords.
DISCUSSION: These findings indicate that phonotactic structure shapes the relative salience of consonants and vowels in lexical processing, challenging the assumption of a universal C-Bias. This study highlights the role of language-specific phonological constraints in word learning and suggests that phonological processing is more flexible than previously assumed.
PMID:42233081 | PMC:PMC13223176 | DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1757864
