Early stage visual-orthographic processes predict long-term retention of word form and meaning: a visual encoding training study

Mirror invariance in the subsequent acquisition of a script with separate forms for reading and writing

PURPOSE

Does suppression of mirror-invariance in one script generalize to a subsequently learned script?

METHOD

We examined mirror invariance in writing and recognition among native Latin-scriptal children and adults (n = 181) learning the Hebrew print script (for reading), and among a subset (n = 92) also learning the Hebrew cursive script (for writing). Hebrew-Latin biscriptal Israeli adults (n = 17) provided comparison.

RESULTS

For the most part, mirror invariance was more evident in Hebrew print than in Latin in both writing and recognition among native Latin-scriptals. The number of previously acquired scripts had no effect. Letters' text-frequency inversely affected written mirror-error frequency. Written reversal errors were less frequent in cursive; orientation recognition was more fluent in print.

CONCLUSIONS

Mirror-invariance suppression in one's native script does not generalize to a subsequently acquired script. Factors affecting mirror-invariance suppression in the subsequent script include its form and function and individual letters' text-frequency.

Interference effects of radical markings and stroke order animations on Chinese character learning among L2 learners

There is controversy around whether presenting sub-character units such as radicals and strokes are beneficial to L2 Chinese learning. The present study explored the effects of radical markings (i.e., marked radicals with different colors) and stroke order animations on learning Chinese characters. Forty Chinese L2 learners with native alphabetic languages were divided into high-and low-level groups. They were first required to learn Chinese characters under four conditions either: (a) presented radical markings with stroke animations; (b) presented no radical markings with stroke animations; (c) presented radical markings without stroke animations; or (d) presented neither radical markings nor stroke animations. After learning, the participants were given character recognition and character-meaning matching tests. Results showed that the presentation of radical markings increased the participants’ reaction times in the character recognition test and decreased their recognition accuracy. Moreover, presenting stroke order animations also decreased the participants’ accuracy in recognizing characters. Beyond that, presenting radical markings and stroke order animations had no significant influence on character-meaning matching tests. These results indicate that providing radical and stroke information might interfere with character learning instead of facilitating character learning. The results suggest that excessive visual information introduced in the learning process may increase L2 learners’ cognition load. Also, the findings contribute to theoretical arguments about the analytic and holistic processing of Chinese characters and the pedagogical implications for teaching Chinese as a second language.

Typical and Atypical Development of Visual Expertise for Print as Indexed by the Visual Word N1 (N170w): A Systematic Review

The visual word N1 (N170w) is an early brain ERP component that has been found to be a neurophysiological marker for print expertise, which is a prelexical requirement associated with reading development. To date, no other review has assimilated existing research on reading difficulties and atypical development of processes reflected in the N170w response. Hence, this systematic review synthesized results and evaluated neurophysiological and experimental procedures across different studies about visual print expertise in reading development. Literature databases were examined for relevant studies from 1995 to 2020 investigating the N170w response in individuals with or without reading disorders. To capture the development of the N170w related to reading, results were compared between three different age groups: pre-literate children, school-aged children, and young adults. The majority of available N170w studies (N = 69) investigated adults (n = 31) followed by children (school-aged: n = 21; pre-literate: n = 4) and adolescents (n = 1) while some studies investigated a combination of these age groups (n = 12). Most studies were conducted with German-speaking populations (n = 17), followed by English (n = 15) and Chinese (n = 14) speaking participants. The N170w was primarily investigated using a combination of words, pseudowords, and symbols (n = 20) and mostly used repetition-detection (n = 16) or lexical-decision tasks (n = 16). Different studies posed huge variability in selecting electrode sites for analysis; however, most focused on P7, P8, and O1 sites of the international 10–20 system. Most of the studies in adults have found a more negative N170w in controls than poor readers, whereas in children, the results have been mixed. In typical readers, N170w ranged from having a bilateral distribution to a left-hemispheric dominance throughout development, whereas in young, poor readers, the response was mainly right-lateralized and then remained in a bilateral distribution. Moreover, the N170w latency has varied according to age group, with adults having an earlier onset yet with shorter latency than school-aged and pre-literate children. This systematic review provides a comprehensive picture of the development of print expertise as indexed by the N170w across age groups and reading abilities and discusses theoretical and methodological differences and challenges in the field, aiming to guide future research.

From Hand to Eye With the Devil In-Between: Which Cognitive Mechanisms Underpin the Benefit From Handwriting Training When Learning Visual Graphs?

Cognitive science has recently shown a renewed interest on the benefit from training in handwriting (HW) when learning visual graphs, given that this learning experience improves more subsequent visual graph recognition than other forms of training. However, the underlying cognitive mechanism of this HW benefit has been elusive. Building on the 50 years of research on this topic, the present work outlines a theoretical approach to study this mechanism, specifying testable hypotheses that will allow distinguishing between confronting perspectives, i.e., symbolic accounts that hold that perceptual learning and visual analysis underpin the benefit from HW training vs. embodied sensorimotor accounts that argue for motoric representations as inner part of orthographic representations acquired via HW training. From the evidence critically revisited, we concluded that symbolic accounts are parsimonious and could better explain the benefit from HW training when learning visual graphs. The future challenge will be to put at test the detailed predictions presented here, so that the devil has no longer room in this equation.

Visual Working Memory of Chinese Characters and Expertise: The Expert's Memory Advantage Is Based on Long-Term Knowledge of Visual Word Forms

People unfamiliar with Chinese characters show poorer visual working memory (VWM) performance for Chinese characters than do literates in Chinese. In a series of experiments, we investigated the reasons for this expertise advantage. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the advantage of Chinese literates does not transfer to novel material. Experts had similar resolution as novices for material outside of their field of expertise, and the memory of novices and experts did not differ when detecting a big change, e.g., when a character’s color was changed. Memorizing appears to function as a rather abstract representation of word forms because memory for characters’ fonts was poor independently of expertise (Experiment 3), though still visual. Distractors that were highly similar conceptually did not increase memory errors, but visually similar distractors impaired memory (Experiment 4). We hypothesized that literates in Chinese represent characters in VWM as tokens of visual word forms made available by long-term memory. In Experiment 5, we provided novices with visual word form knowledge. Participants subsequently performed a change detection task with trained and novel characters in a functional magnetic resonance experiment. We analyzed set size- and training-dependent effects in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the visual word form area. VWM for trained characters was better than for novel characters. Neural activity increased with set size and at a slower rate for trained than for novel characters. All conditions approached the same maximum, but novel characters reached the maximum at a smaller set size than trained characters. The time course of the bold response depended on set size and knowledge status. Starting from the same initial maximum, neural activity at small set sizes returned to baseline more quickly for trained characters than for novel characters. Additionally, high performers showed generally more neural activity in the IPS than low performers. We conclude that experts’ better performance in working memory (WM) is caused by the availability of visual long-term representations (word form types) that allow a sparse representation of the perceived stimuli and make even small changes big because they cause a type change that is easily detected.

Parietotemporal Stimulation Affects Acquisition of Novel Grapheme-Phoneme Mappings in Adult Readers

Neuroimaging work from developmental and reading intervention research has suggested a cause of reading failure may be lack of engagement of parietotemporal cortex during initial acquisition of grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound) mappings. Parietotemporal activation increases following grapheme-phoneme learning and successful reading intervention. Further, stimulation of parietotemporal cortex improves reading skill in lower ability adults. However, it is unclear whether these improvements following stimulation are due to enhanced grapheme-phoneme mapping abilities. To test this hypothesis, we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to manipulate parietotemporal function in adult readers as they learned a novel artificial orthography with new grapheme-phoneme mappings. Participants received real or sham stimulation to the left inferior parietal lobe (L IPL) for 20 min before training. They received explicit training over the course of 3 days on 10 novel words each day. Learning of the artificial orthography was assessed at a pre-training baseline session, the end of each of the three training sessions, an immediate post-training session and a delayed post-training session about 4 weeks after training. Stimulation interacted with baseline reading skill to affect learning of trained words and transfer to untrained words. Lower skill readers showed better acquisition, whereas higher skill readers showed worse acquisition, when training was paired with real stimulation, as compared to readers who received sham stimulation. However, readers of all skill levels showed better maintenance of trained material following parietotemporal stimulation, indicating a differential effect of stimulation on initial learning and consolidation. Overall, these results indicate that parietotemporal stimulation can enhance learning of new grapheme-phoneme relationships in readers with lower reading skill. Yet, while parietotemporal function is critical to new learning, its role in continued reading improvement likely changes as readers progress in skill.