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Monaghan P, Jago LS, Speyer L, Turnbull H, Alcock KJ, Rowland CF, Cain K. Statistical learning ability at 17 months relates to early reading skills via oral language. J Exp Child Psychol 2024; 246:106002. [PMID: 39002185 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2023] [Revised: 05/23/2024] [Accepted: 05/23/2024] [Indexed: 07/15/2024]
Abstract
Statistical learning ability has been found to relate to children's reading skills. Yet, statistical learning is also known to be vital for developing oral language skills, and oral language and reading skills relate strongly. These connections raise the question of whether statistical learning ability affects reading via oral language or directly. Statistical learning is multifaceted, and so different aspects of statistical learning might influence oral language and reading skills distinctly. In a longitudinal study, we determined how two aspects of statistical learning from an artificial language tested on 70 17-month-old infants-segmenting sequences from speech and generalizing the sequence structure-related to oral language skills measured at 54 months and reading skills measured at approximately 75 months. Statistical learning segmentation did not relate significantly to oral language or reading, whereas statistical learning generalization related to oral language, but only indirectly related to reading. Our results showed that children's early statistical learning ability was associated with learning to read via the children's oral language skills.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lana S Jago
- Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK; Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 5AH, UK
| | | | | | | | - Caroline F Rowland
- University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZX, UK; Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 6525 XD Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Kate Cain
- Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK
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2
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Carr JW, Rastle K. Why do languages tolerate heterography? An experimental investigation into the emergence of informative orthography. Cognition 2024; 249:105809. [PMID: 38781759 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105809] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2023] [Revised: 04/25/2024] [Accepted: 04/29/2024] [Indexed: 05/25/2024]
Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that opaque orthographies place additional demands on learning, often requiring many years to fully acquire. It is less widely recognized, however, that such opacity may offer certain benefits in the context of reading. For example, heterographic homophones such as ⟨knight⟩ and ⟨night⟩ (words that sound the same but which are spelled differently) impose additional costs in learning but reduce ambiguity in reading. Here, we consider the possibility that-left to evolve freely-writing systems will sometimes choose to forego some simplicity for the sake of informativeness when there is functional pressure to do so. We investigate this hypothesis by simulating the evolution of orthography as it is transmitted from one generation to the next, both with and without a communicative pressure for ambiguity avoidance. In addition, we consider two mechanisms by which informative heterography might be selected for: differentiation, in which new spellings are created to differentiate meaning (e.g., ⟨lite⟩ vs. ⟨light⟩), and conservation, in which heterography arises as a byproduct of sound change (e.g., ⟨meat⟩ vs. ⟨meet⟩). Under pressure from learning alone, orthographic systems become transparent, but when combined with communicative pressure, they tend to favor some additional informativeness. Nevertheless, our findings also suggest that, in the long term, simpler, transparent spellings may be preferred in the absence of top-down explicit teaching.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jon W Carr
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom.
| | - Kathleen Rastle
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
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3
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Isbilen ES, Laver A, Siegelman N, Aslin RN. Memory representations are flexibly adapted to orthographic systems: A comparison of English and Hebrew. Brain Res 2024:149127. [PMID: 39033951 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2024.149127] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2024] [Revised: 05/16/2024] [Accepted: 07/18/2024] [Indexed: 07/23/2024]
Abstract
Across languages, speech unfolds in the same temporal order, constrained by the forward flow of time. But the way phonology is spatially mapped onto orthography is language-specific, ranging from left-to-right, right-to-left, and top-to-bottom, among others. While the direction of writing systems influences how known words are visually processed, it is unclear whether it influences learning and memory for novel orthographic regularities. The present study tested English and Hebrew speakers on an orthographic word-referent mapping task in their native orthographies (written left-to-right and right-to-left, respectively), where the onsets and offsets of words were equally informative cues to word identity. While all individuals learned orthographic word-referent mappings significantly above chance, the parts of the word that were most strongly represented varied. English monolinguals false alarmed most to competing foils that began with the same bigram as the target, representing word onsets most strongly. However, Hebrew bilinguals trained on their native orthography showed no difference between false alarm rates to onset and offset competitors, representing the beginning and ends of words equally strongly. Importantly, Hebrew bilinguals tested on English words displayed a more English-like false alarm pattern (although not a full switch) suggesting that memory biases adapt to the opposite directionality of encountered text while retaining traces of native language biases. These findings demonstrate that experience with different writing systems influences how individuals represent novel orthographic words, starting in the earliest stages of learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erin S Isbilen
- Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
| | - Abigail Laver
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Noam Siegelman
- Department of Psychology and Department of Cognitive & Brain Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Richard N Aslin
- Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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4
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Kim S, Paterson KB, Nam K, Lee C. Lateralized displays reveal the perceptual locus of the syllable transposition effect in Korean. Neuropsychologia 2024; 199:108907. [PMID: 38734179 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108907] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2023] [Revised: 05/08/2024] [Accepted: 05/08/2024] [Indexed: 05/13/2024]
Abstract
Studies of letter transposition effects in alphabetic scripts provide compelling evidence that letter position is encoded flexibly during reading, potentially during an early, perceptual stage of visual word recognition. Recent studies additionally suggest similar flexibility in the spatial encoding of syllabic information in the Korean Hangul script. With the present research, we conducted two experiments to investigate the locus of this syllabic transposition effect. In Experiment 1, lexical decisions for foveal stimulus presentations were less accurate and slower for four-syllable nonwords created by transposing two syllables in a base word as compared to control nonwords, replicating prior evidence for a transposed syllable effect in Korean word recognition. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli were presented to the right and left visual hemifields (i.e., RVF and LVF), which project both unilaterally and contralaterally to each participant's left and right cerebral hemisphere (i.e., LH and RH) respectively, using lateralized stimulus displays. Lexical decisions revealed a syllable transposition effect in the accuracy and latency of lexical decisions for both RVF and LVF presentations. However, response times for correct responses were longer in the LVF, and therefore the RH, as compared to the RVF/LH. As the LVF/RH appears to be selectively sensitive to the visual-perceptual attributes of words, the findings suggest that this syllable transposition effect partly finds its locus within a perceptual stage of processing. We discuss these findings in relation to current models of the spatial encoding of orthographic information during visual word recognition and accounts of visual word recognition in Korean.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sangyub Kim
- Department of Psychology, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Republic of Korea.
| | - Kevin B Paterson
- School of Psychology and Vision Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
| | - Kichun Nam
- Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
| | - Changhwan Lee
- Department of Psychology, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
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5
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Abu Rabia S, Darawshe E. Evaluation of the multiple-deficit hypothesis among dyslexic Arabic-speaking children. DYSLEXIA (CHICHESTER, ENGLAND) 2024; 30:e1759. [PMID: 38433579 DOI: 10.1002/dys.1759] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2022] [Revised: 12/10/2023] [Accepted: 12/14/2023] [Indexed: 03/05/2024]
Abstract
This study examined the multiple-deficit hypothesis among Arabic-speaking elementary school students. A total of 90 students, divided into three main groups based on their performance on an Arabic word-reading task: dyslexic (n = 30), regular age-matched (n = 30), and 3rd-grade regular students, who were matched to the dyslexic group in regard to their reading proficiency level (n = 30). Participants underwent a nine-domain Arabic reading experiment that measured accuracy and fluency to evaluate general reading proficiency. The performance of Arabic dyslexic students was significantly worse than age-matched controls, but similar to young matched controls based on the reading level of each cognitive task. Moreover, dyslexic students showed deficits in three or more cognitive functions, depending on severity. This study adds to the limited empirical research on the double-deficit hypothesis and its extension to the multiple-domain model among young Arabic students.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Esraa Darawshe
- Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
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Kaldes G, Tighe EL, Romski M, Pigott TD, Sun CD. Morphological Assessment Features and their Relations to Reading: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Study. EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH REVIEW 2024; 43:100602. [PMID: 38854741 PMCID: PMC11156216 DOI: 10.1016/j.edurev.2024.100602] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2024]
Abstract
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful unit of language (e.g., affixes, base words) that express grammatical and semantic information. Additionally, morphological knowledge is significantly related to children's word reading and reading comprehension skills. Researchers have broadly assessed morphological knowledge by using a wide range of tasks and stimuli, which has influenced the interpretation of the relations between morphological knowledge and reading outcomes. This review of 103 studies used meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) to investigate the relations between commonly occurring morphological knowledge assessment features (e.g., written versus oral, spelling versus no spelling) in the literature to reading outcomes, including word reading and reading comprehension. Meta-regression techniques were used to examine moderators of age and reading ability. Morphological assessments that used a written modality (e.g., reading, writing) were more predictive of word reading outcomes than those administered orally. Assessments of morphological spelling were more predictive of both word reading and reading comprehension outcomes than those that did not examine spelling accuracy. Age was a significant moderator of the relation between morphology and word reading, such that the relation was stronger for the younger than the older children. Younger children also demonstrated higher relations between multiple task dimensions and reading comprehension, including oral tasks, tasks without decoding, and tasks that provided context clues. These findings have important implications for future morphological intervention studies aimed to improve children's reading outcomes, in particular the use of orthography and spelling within the context of teaching morphology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gal Kaldes
- Georgia State University, Departments of Learning Sciences and Psychology, United States
| | | | - MaryAnn Romski
- Georgia State University, Departments of Communication and Psychology, United States
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Tian M, Ji Y, Wang R, Bi HY. Impaired Ability in Visual-Spatial Attention in Chinese Children With Developmental Dyslexia. JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES 2024:222194241241040. [PMID: 38591175 DOI: 10.1177/00222194241241040] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/10/2024]
Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that children with dyslexia in alphabetic languages exhibit visual-spatial attention deficits that can obstruct reading acquisition by impairing their phonological decoding skills. However, it remains an open question whether these visual-spatial attention deficits are present in children with dyslexia in non-alphabetic languages. Chinese, with its logographic writing system, offers a unique opportunity to explore this question. The presence of visual-spatial attention deficits in Chinese children with dyslexia remains insufficiently investigated. Therefore, this study aimed to explore whether such deficits exist, employing a visual search paradigm. Three visual search tasks were conducted, encompassing two singleton feature search tasks and a serial conjunction search task. The results indicated that Chinese children with dyslexia performed as well as chronological age-matched control children in color search tasks but less effectively in orientation search, suggesting a difficulty in the rapid visual processing of orientation: a deficit potentially specific to Chinese dyslexia. Crucially, Chinese children with dyslexia also exhibited lower accuracy, longer reaction times, and steeper slopes in the reaction times by set size function in the conjunction search task compared to control children, which is indicative of a visual-spatial attention deficit.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mengyu Tian
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Center for Brain Science and Learning Difficulties, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Center for Educational Science and Technology, Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, China
| | - Yuzhu Ji
- Institute of Applied Psychology, College of Education, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
| | - Runzhou Wang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Center for Brain Science and Learning Difficulties, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Hong-Yan Bi
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Center for Brain Science and Learning Difficulties, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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8
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Clapp W, Sumner M. The episodic encoding of spoken words in Hindi. JASA EXPRESS LETTERS 2024; 4:035202. [PMID: 38426889 DOI: 10.1121/10.0025134] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2023] [Accepted: 02/14/2024] [Indexed: 03/02/2024]
Abstract
The discovery that listeners more accurately identify words repeated in the same voice than in a different voice has had an enormous influence on models of representation and speech perception. Widely replicated in English, we understand little about whether and how this effect generalizes across languages. In a continuous recognition memory study with Hindi speakers and listeners (N = 178), we replicated the talker-specificity effect for accuracy-based measures (hit rate and D'), and found the latency advantage to be marginal (p = 0.06). These data help us better understand talker-specificity effects cross-linguistically and highlight the importance of expanding work to less studied languages.
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Affiliation(s)
- William Clapp
- Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, ,
| | - Meghan Sumner
- Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, ,
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Mizrachi N, Eviatar Z, Peleg O, Bitan T. Inter- and intra- hemispheric interactions in reading ambiguous words. Cortex 2024; 171:257-271. [PMID: 38048664 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2023.09.022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2022] [Revised: 06/29/2023] [Accepted: 09/20/2023] [Indexed: 12/06/2023]
Abstract
The present study investigated how the brain processes words with multiple meanings. Specifically, we examined the inter- and intra-hemispheric connectivity of unambiguous words compared to two types of ambiguous words: homophonic homographs, which have multiple meanings mapped to a single phonological representation and orthography, and heterophonic homographs, which have multiple meanings mapped to different phonological representations but the same orthography. Using a semantic relatedness judgment task and effective connectivity analysis via Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) on previously published fMRI data (Bitan et al., 2017), we found that the two hemispheres compete in orthographic processing during the reading of unambiguous words. For heterophonic homographs, we observed increased connectivity within the left hemisphere, highlighting the importance of top-down re-activation of orthographic representations by phonological ones for considering alternative meanings. For homophonic homographs, we found a flow of information from the left to the right hemisphere and from the right to the left, indicating that the brain retrieves different meanings using different pathways. These findings provide novel insights into the complex mechanisms involved in language processing and shed light on the different communication patterns within and between hemispheres during the processing of ambiguous and unambiguous words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nofar Mizrachi
- Psychology Department, Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
| | - Zohar Eviatar
- Psychology Department, Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
| | - Orna Peleg
- The Program of Cognitive Studies of Language and Its Uses, and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
| | - Tali Bitan
- Psychology Department, Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel; The Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel; Department of Speech Language Pathology and Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
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10
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Marks RA, Eggleston R, Kovelman I. Brain bases of morphological awareness and longitudinal word reading outcomes. J Exp Child Psychol 2024; 238:105802. [PMID: 37924662 PMCID: PMC10918614 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105802] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/22/2023] [Revised: 09/11/2023] [Accepted: 10/02/2023] [Indexed: 11/06/2023]
Abstract
Children's spoken language skills are essential to the development of the "reading brain," or the neurocognitive systems that underlie successful literacy. Morphological awareness, or sensitivity to the smallest units of meaning, is a language skill that facilitates fluent recognition of meaning in print. Yet despite the growing evidence that morphology is integral to literacy success, associations among morphological awareness, literacy acquisition, and brain development remain largely unexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a longitudinal investigation with 75 elementary school children (5-11 years of age) who completed an auditory morphological awareness neuroimaging task at Time 1 as well as literacy assessments at both Time 1 and Time 2 (1.5 years later). Findings reveal longitudinal brain-behavior associations between morphological processing at Time 1 and reading outcomes at Time 2. First, activation in superior temporal brain regions involved in word segmentation was associated with both future reading skill and steeper reading gains over time. Second, a wider array of brain regions across the language network were associated with polymorphemic word reading as compared with broader word reading skill (reading both simple and complex words). Together, these findings reinforce the importance of word segmentation skills in learning to read and highlight the importance of considering complex word reading skills in building comprehensive neurocognitive models of literacy. This study fills a gap in our knowledge of how processing meaningful units in speech may help to explain differences in children's reading development over time and informs ongoing theoretical questions about the role of morphology in learning to read.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca A Marks
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
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Asadi IA, Asli-Badarneh A, Vaknin-Nusbaum V. The impact of morphological density on reading comprehension in Arabic: A comparison between typically developing and children with reading disabilities. DYSLEXIA (CHICHESTER, ENGLAND) 2024; 30:e1761. [PMID: 38237951 DOI: 10.1002/dys.1761] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/06/2023] [Revised: 08/06/2023] [Accepted: 01/04/2024] [Indexed: 02/13/2024]
Abstract
This study examined the influence of morphological density on reading comprehension in Arabic and whether this influence differs between typical and children with reading disabilities. Morphological density in Arabic is a text feature that refers to using bound morphemes, creating dense words with more morphemes. The participants were 182 fifth-graders, both typical and children with reading disabilities. Children were assessed in reading comprehension by reading texts with low- or high-morphological density. Findings revealed that overall morphological density impacted reading comprehension performance. That is, scores were found to be higher while reading low-density text than high-density text. Moreover, an interaction of morphological density condition by reading proficiency showed no density text effect among typical developing readers. However, a difference was obtained in the children with reading disabilities whereas low-morphological density text score was higher than the score of high-morphological density text. The study highlights the importance of morphological awareness in reading comprehension in Arabic, extending that morphological density plays an important role in this process. The results are discussed in light of the lexical quality hypothesis and simple view of reading model. The findings imply the need of explicit morphological instruction for dense morphological forms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ibrahim A Asadi
- Department of Special Education and Learning Disabilities, The Academic Arab College for Education, Haifa, Israel
| | - Abeer Asli-Badarneh
- Department of Early Chilhood, The Academic Arab College for Education, Haifa, Israel
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Liversedge SP, Olkoniemi H, Zang C, Li X, Yan G, Bai X, Hyönä J. Universality in eye movements and reading: A replication with increased power. Cognition 2024; 242:105636. [PMID: 37857054 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105636] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2022] [Revised: 09/10/2023] [Accepted: 10/05/2023] [Indexed: 10/21/2023]
Abstract
Liversedge, Drieghe, Li, Yan, Bai and Hyönä (2016) reported an eye movement study that investigated reading in Chinese, Finnish and English (languages with markedly different orthographic characteristics). Analyses of the eye movement records showed robust differences in fine grained characteristics of eye movements between languages, however, overall sentence reading times did not differ. Liversedge et al. interpreted the entire set of results across languages as reflecting universal aspects of processing in reading. However, the study has been criticized as being statistically underpowered (Brysbaert, 2019) given that only 19-21 subjects were tested in each language. Also, given current best practice, the original statistical analyses can be considered to be somewhat weak (e.g., no inclusion of random slopes and no formal comparison of performance between the three languages). Finally, the original study did not include any formal statistical model to assess effects across all three languages simultaneously. To address these (and some other) concerns, we tested at least 80 new subjects in each language and conducted formal statistical modeling of our data across all three languages. To do this, we included an index that captured variability in visual complexity in each language. Unlike the original findings, the new analyses showed shorter total sentence reading times for Chinese relative to Finnish and English readers. The other main findings reported in the original study were consistent. We suggest that the faster reading times for Chinese subjects occurred due to cultural changes that have taken place in the decade or so that lapsed between when the original and current subjects were tested. We maintain our view that the results can be taken to reflect universality in aspects of reading and we evaluate the claims regarding a lack of statistical power that were levelled against the original article.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Chuanli Zang
- University of Central Lancashire, UK; Tianjin Normal University, PR China.
| | - Xin Li
- Tianjin Normal University, PR China
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Asadi IA, Vaknin-Nusbaum V, Taha H. The Role of Morphological Decomposition in Reading Complex Words in Arabic in Elementary School Years. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2023; 52:2863-2876. [PMID: 37922026 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-10024-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 09/14/2023] [Indexed: 11/05/2023]
Abstract
We examined the role of morphological processing in the reading of inflections and derivations in Arabic, a morphologically-rich language, among 228 first-graders and 230 second-graders. All words were morphologically complex, with differences in number of morphemes and morphological transparency. Inflections consisted of three morphemes, with high transparency of the root morpheme, while derivations consisted of two morphemes with lower transparency of the root. Results indicated that, despite their matching in frequency and syllabic length, reading performances of derivations was better than those of inflections. That is, three-morphemic highly transparent inflections were read slower and involved more errors than bi-morphemic less transparent derivations. These differences in reading performance between inflectional and derivational words might suggest that Arab-speaking novice readers use a morphological decomposition process that is reflected in reading accuracy and fluency. The results highlight the important role morphology has in reading, even at a young age, along with reading acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ibrahim A Asadi
- Department of Learning Disabilities and Special Education, The Arab Academic College for Education in Israel, 22 Hahashmal St, P.O. Box 8340, Haifa, Israel.
- The Unit for the Study of Arabic Language, Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
| | - Vered Vaknin-Nusbaum
- Department of Education, Western Galilee College, P.O.B. 2125, 24121, Akko, Israel
- The Center for The Study of Society, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Haitham Taha
- The Unit for the Study of Arabic Language, Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- The Cognitive Laboratory for Reading and Learning Research, Sakhnin College for Teachers' Education, Sakhnin, Israel
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Martelletti DM, Luzuriaga M, Furman M. 'What makes you say so?' Metacognition improves the sustained learning of inferential reading skills in English as a second language. Trends Neurosci Educ 2023; 33:100213. [PMID: 38049292 DOI: 10.1016/j.tine.2023.100213] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2023] [Revised: 09/11/2023] [Accepted: 09/12/2023] [Indexed: 12/06/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE This quasi-experimental study investigates the impact of enhancing metacognition in learning inferential reading skills in English as a second language. PROCEDURES Six Grade 4 classes were randomly assigned to two groups. The "Control group" received an instructional unit on inferential reading skills. The "Metacognition group" received the same unit, including metacognitive activities. Students were assessed in metacognitive and inferential reading skills before (pre-test), immediately after (post-test) and four weeks after the intervention (deferred test). FINDINGS Metacognitive strategy instruction enhanced student learning of inferential reading skills and its sustainability in time. The Metacognition group attained a significantly higher average score in deploying metacognitive skills both in the post and deferred tests, indicating that the intervention was effective, as intended, to this end. While both groups significantly improved their proficiency in inferential reading skills after working with the provided instructional unit, there was a significant difference in the Metacognition group, which outperformed the Control one, even more strongly in the deferred test. CONCLUSIONS Findings support the importance of deliberately promoting metacognition as it positively impacts learning outcomes and sustainability.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Mariana Luzuriaga
- School of Education, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina; School of Education, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, CONICET, Argentina
| | - Melina Furman
- School of Education, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, Argentina; School of Education, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, CONICET, Argentina.
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15
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Martín-Luengo B, Hu Z, Cadavid S, Luna K. Do pictures influence memory and metamemory in Chinese vocabulary learning? Evidence from Russian and Colombian learners. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0286824. [PMID: 37917634 PMCID: PMC10621806 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286824] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2022] [Accepted: 05/24/2023] [Indexed: 11/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Despite the increasing interest in learning non-alphabetical languages such as Chinese, research about its learning process for alphabet users is scarce. Research conducted on Latin alphabet users on learning languages written in Latin alphabet, or on Chinese language learning in Chinese native speakers, users is undoubtedly useful but it does not inform about the peculiarities of leaning Chinese language by other alphabet users. Additionally, several authors have highlighted the need to inform and extend the current second language acquisition theories on the particular challenges of learning a language that uses another script. In this research we aim to contribute filling this research gap and studied the learning process of Chinese vocabulary by users of scripts different from Chinese. In particular, we examined the role of pictures and translations as learning aids for Chinese language vocabulary learning in participants familiarized with either one or two alphabetical scripts (different from the Chinese logographic script). One hundred thirteen participants studied word-aid pairs in different conditions: Hanzi (Chinese in Chinese characters)-picture; Pinyin (Chinese in Latin alphabet)-picture; Hanzi-translation; Pinyin-translation. Participants evaluated the future recallability of the words and their meanings (i.e., judgements of learning) and completed two recognition tests. Words in Pinyin and words-translation pairs were judged to be easier to remember than Hanzi and word-pictures pairs. Participants remembered the meaning of words written in Hanzi better than in Pinyin, and word-translations pairs better than pictures, but they were more confident about word-picture pairs. These results suggest that pictures boost confidence in learning Chinese, but do not affect performance. These findings suggest that while pictures may boost confidence in learning Chinese, they may not necessarily lead to better performance. Our study provides valuable insights into the interaction of learning aids and writing system in (meta)memory during vocabulary acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beatriz Martín-Luengo
- Center for Cognition and Decision Making, Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, HSE University, Moscow, Russia
| | - Zhimin Hu
- Center for Cognition and Decision Making, Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, HSE University, Moscow, Russia
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - Sara Cadavid
- School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia
| | - Karlos Luna
- Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia
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16
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Yan M, Kliegl R. Chinese offers a test for universal cognitive processes. Behav Brain Sci 2023; 46:e258. [PMID: 37779271 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x23000663] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/03/2023]
Abstract
The Chinese writing system is unique in its implementation of graphemic, phonological, morphological, and semantic features. We add nuances to its portrait in the target article and highlight research on radically different timelines of phonological and semantic activation during reading of Chinese and alphabetic script, paving the way for the identification of universal and culture-specific cognitive processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ming Yan
- Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Taipa, ; https://www.um.edu.mo/fss/psychology/staff_yanming.html
- Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau
| | - Reinhold Kliegl
- Department of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany ; https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/trainingswissenschaft/staff/rkliegl
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17
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Howard PL, Pagán A. No evidence for high inflexible precision of prediction errors in autism during lexical processing. Autism Res 2023; 16:1775-1785. [PMID: 37497600 DOI: 10.1002/aur.2994] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2022] [Accepted: 07/06/2023] [Indexed: 07/28/2023]
Abstract
Research has shown that information processing differences associated with autism could impact on language and literacy development. This study tested an approach to autistic cognition that suggests learning occurs via prediction errors, and autistic people have very precise and inflexible predictions that result in more sensitivity to meaningless signal errors than non-autistic readers. We used this theoretical background to investigate whether differences in prediction coding influence how orthographic (Experiment 1) and semantic information (Experiment 2) is processed by autistic readers. Experiment 1 used a lexical decision task to test whether letter position information was processed less flexibly by autistic than non-autistic readers. Three types of letter strings: words, transposed letter and substituted letters nonwords were presented. Experiment 2 used a semantic relatedness task to test whether autistic readers processed words with high and low semantic diversity differently to non-autistic readers. Results showed similar transposed letter and semantic diversity effects for all readers; indicating that orthographic and semantic information are processed similarly by autistic and non-autistic readers; and therefore, differences in prediction coding were not evident for these lexical processing tasks.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Ascensión Pagán
- School of Psychology and Vision Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
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18
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Lahoud H, Share DL, Shechter A. A developmental study of eye movements in Hebrew word reading: the effects of word familiarity, word length, and reading proficiency. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1052755. [PMID: 37484068 PMCID: PMC10361414 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1052755] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2022] [Accepted: 06/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous studies examining the link between visual word recognition and eye movements have shown that eye movements reflect the time-course of cognitive processes involved in reading. Whereas most studies have been undertaken in Western European languages written in the Roman alphabet, the present developmental study investigates a non-European language-Hebrew, which is written in a non-alphabetic (abjadic) script. We compared the eye-movements of children in Grades 4 to 6 (N = 30) and university students (N = 30) reading familiar real words and unfamiliar (pseudo)words of 3 letters and 5 letters in length. Using linear mixed models, we focused on the effects of word familiarity, word length, and age group. Our results highlight both universal aspects of word reading (developmental and familiarity (lexicality) effects) as well as language-specific word length effect which appears to be related to the unique morphological and orthographic features of the Semitic abjad.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hend Lahoud
- Department of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - David L. Share
- Department of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Adi Shechter
- Department of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
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19
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Yeung KKY, Chan RTC, Chan HY, Shum KKM, Tso RVY. Word reading transfer in two distinct languages in reading interventions: How Chinese-English bilingual children with reading difficulties learn to read. RESEARCH IN DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES 2023; 137:104501. [PMID: 37043923 DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104501] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2022] [Revised: 09/25/2022] [Accepted: 04/03/2023] [Indexed: 05/10/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Skills developed from literacy training in L1 are shown to transfer to reading in L2 when both languages involve an alphabetic writing system. However, transfer of literacy skills between a logographic L1 and an alphabetic L2 is less studied. This study examined whether the gain in literacy skills after an 8-week training on 1) Chinese character recognition or 2) English phonics, may generalize across the two languages in Chinese elementary students with reading disabilities. METHODS Chinese-speaking students identified with reading difficulties were randomly assigned to the Chinese intervention (Chinese character orthography training), English intervention (English phonics training), and control groups. Their Chinese and English literacy skills were measured before and after the interventions. RESULTS Though training on the orthography of Chinese characters significantly improved performance in Chinese word reading and Chinese orthographic awareness, our results did not provide evidence for the generalization of word-decoding skills from L1 Chinese to word reading in L2 English. However, phonics training in L2 English benefitted not only English word reading, but also cross-language word reading in L1 Chinese. CONCLUSION We postulated that teaching children analytical skills in decoding words in an alphabetic writing system might likewise benefit their word decoding in a logographic script.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kitty Kit-Yu Yeung
- Psychological Assessment and Clinical Research Unit, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
| | - Ronald Tsz-Chung Chan
- Psychological Assessment and Clinical Research Unit, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
| | - Ho-Yin Chan
- Psychological Assessment and Clinical Research Unit, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
| | - Kathy Kar-Man Shum
- Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
| | - Ricky Van-Yip Tso
- Psychological Assessment and Clinical Research Unit, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
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20
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Iniesta A, Bajo MT, Rivera M, Paolieri D. Transfer effects from language processing to visual attention dynamics: The impact of orthographic transparency. Br J Psychol 2023; 114:86-111. [PMID: 36117407 PMCID: PMC10087185 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12598] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/06/2021] [Revised: 08/18/2022] [Accepted: 08/28/2022] [Indexed: 01/11/2023]
Abstract
The consistency between letters and sounds varies across languages. These differences have been proposed to be associated with different reading mechanisms (lexical vs. phonological), processing grain sizes (coarse vs. fine) and attentional windows (whole words vs. individual letters). This study aimed to extend this idea to writing to dictation. For that purpose, we evaluated whether the use of different types of processing has a differential impact on local windowing attention: phonological (local) processing in a transparent language (Spanish) and lexical (global) processing of an opaque language (English). Spanish and English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and Spanish-English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a writing to dictation task followed by a global-local task. The first key performance showed a critical dissociation between languages: the response times (RTs) from the Spanish writing to dictation task was modulated by word length, whereas the RTs from the English writing to dictation task was modulated by word frequency and age of acquisition, as evidence that language transparency biases processing towards phonological or lexical strategies. In addition, after a Spanish task, participants more efficiently processed local information, which resulted in both the benefit of global congruent information and the reduced cost of incongruent global information. Additionally, the results showed that bilinguals adapt their attentional processing depending on the orthographic transparency.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antonio Iniesta
- Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - María Teresa Bajo
- Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Marta Rivera
- Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Daniela Paolieri
- Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
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21
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González-Valenzuela MJ, López-Montiel D, Chebaani F, Cobos-Cali M, Piedra-Martínez E, Martin-Ruiz I. Predictors of Word and Pseudoword Reading in Languages with Different Orthographic Consistency. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2023; 52:307-330. [PMID: 35788863 PMCID: PMC10030389 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09893-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/15/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
This study analyzes the impact of certain cognitive processes on word and pseudoword reading in languages with different orthographic consistency (Spanish and Arabic) in the first year of Primary Education. The study was conducted with a group of 113 pupils from Algeria and another group of 128 pupils from Ecuador, from a middle-class background and without any special education needs. The participants were assessed in terms of their reading ability of words and pseudowords, knowledge of letters, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and phonological memory. Using a correlational design, descriptive-exploratory, bivariate, and hierarchical multivariate regressions were applied to the different measures of reading in each language. The findings show that knowledge of letters, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and phonological memory contribute differently to the explanation of reading ability in each group at the start of compulsory schooling. These results have important implications for the teaching of reading skills and the prevention of specific learning disabilities, as well as the theory of reading acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria-José González-Valenzuela
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy, Univerisity of Málaga, Campus universitario de Teatinos s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain
| | - Dolores López-Montiel
- Department of Psychobiology and Methodology of Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy, Univerisity of Málaga, Campus universitario de Teatinos s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain
| | - Fatma Chebaani
- Educational Sciences Department, The Higher Normal School of Kouba, Algiers, Cite Garidi 1 Bt “c” N°4 kouba. Alger, Vieux Kouba, Algeria
| | - Marta Cobos-Cali
- Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Educational Sciences, University of Azuay, Avenida 24 de Mayo, 7-77, Cuenca, Ecuador
| | - Elisa Piedra-Martínez
- Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Educational Sciences, University of Azuay, Avenida 24 de Mayo, 7-77, Cuenca, Ecuador
| | - Isaías Martin-Ruiz
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy, Univerisity of Málaga, Campus universitario de Teatinos s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain
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22
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Soo R, Monahan PJ. Language dominance and order of acquisition affect auditory translation priming in heritage speakers. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2023; 76:284-293. [PMID: 35306939 PMCID: PMC9896266 DOI: 10.1177/17470218221091753] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
Late second language (L2) learners show translation priming from the first language (L1) to the second language (L1-L2), while L2-L1 effects are inconsistent. Late L2 learners also acquire the L2 after the L1 and are typically less dominant in the L2. As such, the relative contribution of language dominance and order of acquisition is confounded in these results. Here, Cantonese heritage and native speakers are tested in an auditory translation priming paradigm. As heritage speakers first learn Cantonese (L1) but later become dominant in English (L2), this profile allows for the potential dissociation of dominance and order of acquisition in translation priming. If order of acquisition is the primary factor, stronger priming is expected in the L1-L2 (Cantonese-English) direction; however, if dominance plays a stronger role, priming is expected in the L2-L1 (English-Cantonese) direction. Native speakers showed stronger L1-L2 priming, consistent with previous findings, while heritage speakers showed priming in both directions, and marginally larger L2-L1 priming. Treating language dominance as a continuous variable revealed that L1-L2 priming correlated with increased Cantonese dominance, while L2-L1 priming marginally correlated with increased English dominance. Collectively, these results suggest that both language dominance and order of acquisition help explain translation priming findings and bilingual lexical processing, generally. Overall, they invite a rethinking of the role of both variables in bilingual lexical access for speakers with different language dominance profiles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rachel Soo
- Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,Rachel Soo, Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Totem Field Studios, 2613 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada.
| | - Philip J Monahan
- Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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23
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Effects of syllable boundaries in Tibetan reading. Sci Rep 2023; 13:314. [PMID: 36609398 PMCID: PMC9822970 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-25759-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2022] [Accepted: 12/05/2022] [Indexed: 01/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Interword spaces exist in the texts of many languages that use alphabetic writing systems. In most cases, interword spaces, as a kind of word boundary information, play an important role in the reading process of readers. Tibetan also uses alphabetic writing, its text has no spaces between words as word boundary markers. Instead, there are intersyllable tshegs (" "), which are superscript dots. Interword spaces play an important role in reading as word boundary information. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the role of tshegs and what effect replacing tshegs with spaces will have on Tibetan reading. To answer these questions, Experiment 1 was conducted in which 72 Tibetan undergraduates read three-syllable-boundary conditions (normal, spaced, and untsheged). However, in Experiment 1, because we performed the experimental operations of deleting tshegs and replacing tshegs, the spatial information distribution of Tibetan sentences under different operating conditions was different, which may have a certain potential impact on the experimental results. To rule out the underlying confounding factor, in Experiment 2, 58 undergraduates read sentences for both untsheged and alternating-color conditions. Overall, the global and local analyses revealed that tshegs, spaces, and alternating-color markers as syllable boundaries can help readers segment syllables in Tibetan reading. In Tibetan reading, both spaces and tshegs are effective visual syllable segmentation cues, and spaces are more effective visual syllable segmentation cues than tshegs.
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24
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Pérez-Sánchez MÁ, Marín J. On the use of pseudoword reading as estimate of premorbid intelligence in brain injured, psychopathological, or cognitively impaired patients. Front Psychol 2023; 13:1048237. [PMID: 36687816 PMCID: PMC9846550 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1048237] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2022] [Accepted: 12/12/2022] [Indexed: 01/06/2023] Open
Affiliation(s)
| | - Javier Marín
- Departamento de Psicología Básica y Metodología, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
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25
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Hassanein EEA, Johnson ES, Ibrahim S, Alshaboul Y. What predicts word reading in Arabic? Front Psychol 2023; 14:1077643. [PMID: 37187567 PMCID: PMC10176086 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1077643] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2022] [Accepted: 04/13/2023] [Indexed: 05/17/2023] Open
Abstract
Efficient and accurate word reading ability is critical for later reading success. As such, it is important to understand the component skills that underlie strong word reading ability. Although a growing research base points to the importance of phonological processing, morphological processing and orthographic processing for accurate and fluent word reading in Arabic, there are few studies that examine all three areas at one time to better understand their role in word reading. Additionally, it remains unclear whether the contribution of the various processes might differ across the early years when children are learning to read. 1,098 pupils in grades 1-3 participated in this study and took tests for phonological processing, morphological processing, orthographic processing, and word reading accuracy and fluency. According to the findings of regression analyses, the relative contribution of these underlying processes differed according to the method used to test word reading and the student's grade level. Regarding accuracy, several subscales of phonological processing and two measures of orthographic processing accounted for significant differences in word reading accuracy for first graders. For second grade students, nonword repetition, elision, and all three measures of orthographic processing accounted for variance. In third grade, elision and memory for digits, word creation and morpheme identification, and letter/sound identification and orthographic fluency were significant predictors of word reading accuracy. In terms of fluency, two subscales of phonological processing, two measures of orthographic processing, and two measures of morphological processing explained significant differences in word reading fluency for first graders. For second grade students, nonword repetition, elision, RAN-digits, isolation, segmenting and all the measures of orthographic processing and word creation explained unique variance in word reading fluency. In third grade, elision, RAN-letters, RAN-digits and phoneme isolation, all measures of orthographic processing and morphological processing, explained variance in word reading fluency. Implications and future directions in research are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elsayed E. A. Hassanein
- Department of Psychological Sciences, College of Education, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
- *Correspondence: Elsayed E. A. Hassanein,
| | - Evelyn S. Johnson
- Department of Early and Special Education, Boise State University, Boise, ID, United States
- Evelyn S. Johnson,
| | - Sayed Ibrahim
- Department of Educational Sciences, College of Education, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Yousef Alshaboul
- Department of Educational Sciences, College of Education, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
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26
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Pamei G, Cheah ZRE, McBride C. Construct validity of international literacy measures: implications for dyslexia across cultures. JOURNAL OF CULTURAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2022; 7:1-15. [PMID: 36569412 PMCID: PMC9762670 DOI: 10.1007/s41809-022-00115-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/02/2022] [Revised: 11/23/2022] [Accepted: 11/24/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
Construct validity is essential to evaluate the generalizability of findings on literacy and dyslexia. Operational definitions of reading literacy determine the measurement method, yielding territory or country-wide literacy rates. This practice echoes the norm in diagnosis and prevalence estimates of dyslexia. International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSA) of literacy such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) compare countries' performances in relation to how well their students are reading. In this paper, we reexamine the validity claims and evidence using the examples of countries in Southeast Asia-Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, purported to have high proportions of poor readers. The challenge of characterizing reading performance and designing suitable measures for valid international comparisons is similar across phases of reading development and proficiency. The importance of the specificity of scripts and languages for reading abilities and impairments is highlighted. We suggest ways in which researchers can approach the assessment of reading proficiency from a cross-cultural and an interdisciplinary perspective. These can foster contextual caveats for generating and interpreting evidence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gairanlu Pamei
- Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong
| | - Zebedee Rui En Cheah
- Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong
| | - Catherine McBride
- Department of Human Development and Family Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA
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27
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Siegelman N, Schroeder S, Acartürk C, Ahn HD, Alexeeva S, Amenta S, Bertram R, Bonandrini R, Brysbaert M, Chernova D, Da Fonseca SM, Dirix N, Duyck W, Fella A, Frost R, Gattei CA, Kalaitzi A, Kwon N, Lõo K, Marelli M, Papadopoulos TC, Protopapas A, Savo S, Shalom DE, Slioussar N, Stein R, Sui L, Taboh A, Tønnesen V, Usal KA, Kuperman V. Expanding horizons of cross-linguistic research on reading: The Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus (MECO). Behav Res Methods 2022; 54:2843-2863. [PMID: 35112286 PMCID: PMC8809631 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01772-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/14/2021] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
Abstract
Scientific studies of language behavior need to grapple with a large diversity of languages in the world and, for reading, a further variability in writing systems. Yet, the ability to form meaningful theories of reading is contingent on the availability of cross-linguistic behavioral data. This paper offers new insights into aspects of reading behavior that are shared and those that vary systematically across languages through an investigation of eye-tracking data from 13 languages recorded during text reading. We begin with reporting a bibliometric analysis of eye-tracking studies showing that the current empirical base is insufficient for cross-linguistic comparisons. We respond to this empirical lacuna by presenting the Multilingual Eye-Movement Corpus (MECO), the product of an international multi-lab collaboration. We examine which behavioral indices differentiate between reading in written languages, and which measures are stable across languages. One of the findings is that readers of different languages vary considerably in their skipping rate (i.e., the likelihood of not fixating on a word even once) and that this variability is explained by cross-linguistic differences in word length distributions. In contrast, if readers do not skip a word, they tend to spend a similar average time viewing it. We outline the implications of these findings for theories of reading. We also describe prospective uses of the publicly available MECO data, and its further development plans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Noam Siegelman
- Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, Suite #900, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA.
| | | | - Cengiz Acartürk
- Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
- Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Daria Chernova
- Saint Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia
| | | | | | | | | | - Ram Frost
- The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Carolina A Gattei
- Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Diego E Shalom
- Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Natalia Slioussar
- Saint Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia
- Higher School of Economics (HSE) Moscow, Moscow, Russia
| | - Roni Stein
- The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
| | | | - Analí Taboh
- Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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28
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Awadh FHR, Zoubrinetzky R, Zaher A, Valdois S. Visual attention span as a predictor of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Arabic. Front Psychol 2022; 13:868530. [DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.868530] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2022] [Accepted: 10/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
IntroductionVisual attention span is a measure of multielement parallel processing. Individuals with higher visual attention span are expected to allocate more attention to letters within strings, which boosts letter identification and translates into more efficient reading. Given the high visual complexity of the Arabic writing system, we expected visual attention span to be an important predictor of reading in the Arabic language.MethodsNative Arabic readers from Grade 4 and Grade 5 were recruited in Iraqi schools. We assessed the contribution of visual attention span to their reading fluency performance in tasks of fully vowelized word and pseudo-word reading, non-vowelized text reading, and written text comprehension. Their phonological awareness, IQ, and single letter processing speed were further evaluated.ResultsResults showed that visual attention span was a significant unique predictor of all the reading measures. Visual attention span and phonological awareness accounted for a similar amount of variance in word and pseudo-word reading fluency. Visual attention span was a far higher predictor than phonological awareness for text reading fluency and the sole predictor of text comprehension.DiscussionThe role of visual attention span to reading is discussed by reference to current word recognition models. Higher involvement of visual attention is expected in vowelized script to compensate for increased crowding in the presence of diacritics. Visual attention would thus contribute to sub-lexical orthographic parsing and favor orthography-to-phonology mapping, in particular for the pseudo-words that do not benefit from efficient lexical feedback. In non-vowelized script, higher visual attention would enhance the accurate and fast identification of root letters within words, thus resulting in faster word recognition.
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Zhang H, Lin J, Cheng X, Li J. The dimensionality of morphological awareness in reading comprehension among Chinese early adolescent readers. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0276546. [PMID: 36302038 PMCID: PMC9612480 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276546] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent research has included multiple measures of morphological awareness to address the dimensionality of morphological construct in the context of modeling skilled reading. However, a majority of studies have an Anglocentric focus. The current study aims to extend the previous studies to logographic learners by evaluating the dimensionality of morphological awareness in higher-order reading comprehension among Chinese adolescent readers. A total of 686 early adolescent students (339 fifth-grade students and 347 sixth-grade students) participated in the study. They completed a series of morphological awareness measurements (morpheme recognition, morpheme discrimination, and compound structure awareness), vocabulary knowledge, lexical inference and reading comprehension. By testing three alternative path models, the study showed that morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge were best represented as parallel covariates in predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More important, the study highlighted the mediator of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among Chinese readers. Empirical findings suggest that morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge seem to be under a unitary construct in logographic reading acquisition and that word-meaning inference ability connects the path between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. These findings contribute to the complexity in the conceptualization of Chinese morphological awareness and reading instruction by examining the ways in which the morphological construct supports higher-order reading development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haomin Zhang
- The Psycholinguistics Lab, School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- * E-mail:
| | - Jiexin Lin
- The Psycholinguistics Lab, School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Xi Cheng
- Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Jiefang Li
- Michtom School of Computer Science, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, United States of America
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Raeding with the fingres: Towards a universal model of letter position coding. Psychon Bull Rev 2022; 29:2275-2283. [PMID: 35650465 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-022-02078-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Letter position coding in word recognition has been widely investigated in the visual modality (e.g., labotarory is confusable with laboratory), but not as much in the tactile modality using braille, leading to an incomplete understanding of whether this process is modality-dependent. Unlike sighted readers, braille readers do not show a transposed-letter similarity effect with nonadjacent transpositions (e.g., labotarory = labodanory; Perea et al., 2012). While this latter finding was taken to suggest that the flexibility in letter position coding was due to visual factors (e.g., perceptual uncertainty in the location of visual objects (letters)), it is necessary to test whether transposed-letter effects occur with adjacent letters to reach firm conclusions. Indeed, in the auditory modality (i.e., another serial modality), a transposed-phoneme effect occurs for adjacent but not for nonadjacent transpositions. In a lexical decision task, we examined whether pseudowords created by transposing two adjacent letters of a word (e.g., laboartory) are more confusable with their base word (laboratory) than pseudowords created by replacing those letters (laboestory) in braille. Results showed that transposed-letter pseudowords produced more errors and slower responses than the orthographic controls. Thus, these findings suggest that the mechanism of serial order, while universal, can be shaped by the sensory modality at play.
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Tschense M, Wallot S. Using measures of reading time regularity (RTR) to quantify eye movement dynamics, and how they are shaped by linguistic information. J Vis 2022; 22:9. [PMID: 35612847 PMCID: PMC9165877 DOI: 10.1167/jov.22.6.9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
In this article, we present the concept of reading time regularity (RTR) as a measure to capture reading process dynamics. The first study is concerned with examining one of the assumptions of RTR, namely, that process measures of reading, such as eye movement fluctuations and fixation durations, exhibit higher regularity when contingent on sequentially structured information, such as texts. To test this, eye movements of 26 German native speakers were recorded during reading-unrelated and reading-related tasks. To analyze the data, we used recurrence quantification analysis and sample entropy analysis to quantify the degree of temporal structure in time series of gaze steps and fixation durations. The results showed that eye movements become more regular in reading compared to nonreading conditions. These effects were most prominent when calculated on the basis of gaze step data. In a second study, eye movements of 27 native speakers of German were recorded for five conditions with increasing linguistic information. The results replicate the findings of the first study, verifying that these effects are not due to mere differences in task instructions between conditions. Implications for the concept of RTR and for future studies using these metrics in reading research are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Monika Tschense
- Institute of Psychology, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany.,Research Group Neurocognition of Music and Language, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.,Department of Language and Literature, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.,https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2434-4516., https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/ifp/staff/monika-tschense.html
| | - Sebastian Wallot
- Institute of Psychology, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany.,Department of Language and Literature, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.,https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3626-3940., https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/ifp/staff/sebastian-wallot.html
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Siok WT, Tan LH. Is phonological deficit a necessary or sufficient condition for Chinese reading disability? BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2022; 226:105069. [PMID: 35021145 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2021.105069] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2021] [Revised: 12/21/2021] [Accepted: 12/23/2021] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
While phonological skills have been found to be correlated with reading across different writing systems, recent findings have shown that developmental dyslexia in Chinese individuals has multiple deficits, and no single factor has ever been identified as crucial for learning this writing system. To examine whether a deficit in the phonological or another cognitive domain is a necessary or sufficient condition for Chinese reading disability, this study examined the cognitive profiles of 521 good readers and 502 dyslexic readers in Chinese primary schools using a battery of behavioral measures covering phonological, visual, orthographic, visual-motor coordination and working memory skills. The results showed that among all cognitive measures, phonological skills correlated more strongly with character reading performance but that poor phonological skills did not necessarily or sufficiently lead to poor reading performance in Chinese.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wai Ting Siok
- Department of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
| | - Li Hai Tan
- Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Institute of CNS Regeneration and Ministry of Education CNS Regeneration Collaborative Joint Laboratory, Jinan University (Shenzhen), China; Center for Language and Brain, Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, Shenzhen, China
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Knowledge of Statistics or Statistical Learning? Readers Prioritize the Statistics of their Native Language Over the Learning of Local Regularities. J Cogn 2022; 5:18. [PMID: 36072100 PMCID: PMC9400655 DOI: 10.5334/joc.209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2021] [Accepted: 02/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
A large body of evidence suggests that people spontaneously and implicitly learn about regularities present in the visual input. Although theorized as critical for reading, this ability has been demonstrated mostly with pseudo-fonts or highly atypical artificial words. We tested whether local statistical regularities are extracted from materials that more closely resemble one’s native language. In two experiments, Italian speakers saw a set of letter strings modelled on the Italian lexicon and guessed which of these strings were words in a fictitious language and which were foils. Unknown to participants, words could be distinguished from foils based on their average bigram frequency. Surprisingly, in both experiments, we found no evidence that participants relied on this regularity. Instead, lexical decisions were guided by minimal bigram frequency, a cue rooted in participants’ native language. We discuss the implications of these findings for accounts of statistical learning and visual word processing.
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Cong F, Chen B. The letter position coding mechanism of second language words during sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2021; 75:1932-1947. [PMID: 34806482 DOI: 10.1177/17470218211064539] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
We conducted three eye movement experiments to investigate the mechanism for coding letter positions in a person's second language during sentence reading; we also examined the role of morphology in this process with a more rigorous manipulation. Given that readers obtain information not only from currently fixated words (i.e., the foveal area) but also from upcoming words (i.e., the parafoveal area) to guide their reading, we examined both when the targets were fixated (Exp. 1) and when the targets were seen parafoveally (Exps. 2 and 3). First, we found the classic transposed letter (TL) effect in Exp. 1, but not in Exp. 2 or 3. This implies that flexible letter position coding exists during sentence reading. However, this was limited to words located in the foveal area, suggesting that L2 readers whose L2 proficiency is not as high as skilled native readers are not able to extract and utilise the parafoveal letter identity and position information of a word, whether the word length is long (Exp. 2) or short (Exp. 3). Second, we found morphological information to influence the magnitude of the TL effect in Exp. 1. These results provide new eye movement evidence for the flexibility of L2 letter position coding during sentence reading, as well as the interactions between the different internal representations of words in this process. Future L2 reading frameworks should integrate word recognition and eye movement control models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fengjiao Cong
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Baoguo Chen
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
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Gutierrez-Sigut E, Vergara-Martínez M, Perea M. The impact of visual cues during visual word recognition in deaf readers: An ERP study. Cognition 2021; 218:104938. [PMID: 34678681 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104938] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2021] [Revised: 09/13/2021] [Accepted: 10/11/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Although evidence is still scarce, recent research suggests key differences in how deaf and hearing readers use visual information during visual word recognition. Here we compared the time course of lexical access in deaf and hearing readers of similar reading ability. We also investigated whether one visual property of words, the outline-shape, modulates visual word recognition differently in both groups. We recorded the EEG signal of twenty deaf and twenty hearing readers while they performed a lexical decision task. In addition to the effect of lexicality, we assessed the impact of outline-shape by contrasting responses to pseudowords with an outline-shape that was consistent (e.g., mofor) or inconsistent (e.g., mosor) with their baseword (motor). Despite hearing readers having higher phonological abilities, results showed a remarkably similar time course of the lexicality effect in deaf and hearing readers. We also found that only for deaf readers, inconsistent-shape pseudowords (e.g., mosor) elicited larger amplitude ERPs than consistent-shape pseudowords (e.g., mofor) from 150 ms after stimulus onset and extending into the N400 time window. This latter finding supports the view that deaf readers rely more on visual characteristics than typical hearing readers during visual word recognition. Altogether, our results suggest different mechanisms underlying effective word recognition in deaf and hearing readers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eva Gutierrez-Sigut
- University of Essex, UK; DCAL Research Centre, University College London, UK.
| | | | - Manuel Perea
- ERI-Lectura, University of Valencia, Spain; Universidad Nebrija, Spain
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Iniesta A, Rossi E, Bajo MT, Paolieri D. The Influence of Cross-Linguistic Similarity and Language Background on Writing to Dictation. Front Psychol 2021; 12:679956. [PMID: 34650467 PMCID: PMC8505693 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.679956] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2021] [Accepted: 09/01/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
This study used a word dictation task to examine the influence of a variety of factors on word writing production: cognate status (cognate vs. non-cognate words), orthographic (OS) and phonological similarity (PS) within the set of cognate words, and language learning background [late bilinguals (LBs) with academic literacy and formal instruction in English and Spanish, and heritage speakers (HSs) with academic literacy and formal instruction only in English]. Both accuracy and reaction times for the first key pressed by participants (indicating lexical access), and the time required to type the rest of the word after the first keypress (indicating sublexical processing) was assessed. The results revealed an effect of PS on the dictation task particularly for the first keypress. That is, cognates with high PS were processed faster than cognates with low PS. In contrast to reading studies in which PS only revealed a significant effect when the OS between languages was high (O+P+ vs. O+P-), in the dictation to writing task, the phonology had a more general effect across all conditions, regardless of the level of OS. On the other hand, OS tended to be more influential for typing the rest of the word. This pattern is interpreted as indicating the importance of phonology (and PS in cognates) for initial lexical retrieval when the input is aural. In addition, the role of OS and PS during co-activation was different between groups probably due to the participants' linguistic learning environment. Concretely, HSs were found to show relatively lower OS effects, which is attributed to the greater emphasis on spoken language in their Spanish language learning experiences, compared to the formal education received by the LBs. Thus, the study demonstrates that PS can influence lexical processing of cognates, as long as the task demands specifically require phonological processing, and that variations in language learning experiences also modulate lexical processing in bilinguals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Antonio Iniesta
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Eleonora Rossi
- Department of Linguistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States
| | - M Teresa Bajo
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain
| | - Daniela Paolieri
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain
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Hermena EW, Juma EJ, AlJassmi M. Parafoveal processing of orthographic, morphological, and semantic information during reading Arabic: A boundary paradigm investigation. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0254745. [PMID: 34339439 PMCID: PMC8328344 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254745] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2021] [Accepted: 07/05/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Evidence shows that skilled readers extract information about upcoming words in the parafovea. Using the boundary paradigm, we investigated native Arabic readers' processing of orthographic, morphological, and semantic information available parafoveally. Target words were embedded in frame sentences, and prior to readers fixating them, one of the following previews were made available: (a) Identity preview; (b) Preview that shared the pattern morpheme with the target; (c) Preview that shared the root morpheme with the target; (d) Preview that was a synonym with the target word; (e) Preview with two of the root letters were transposed thus creating a new root, while preserving all letter identities of the target; (f) Preview with two of the root letters were transposed thus creating a pronounceable pseudo root, while also preserving all letter identities of the target; and (g) Previews that was unrelated to the target word and shared no information with it. The results showed that identity, root-preserving, and synonymous preview conditions yielded preview benefit. On the other hand, no benefit was obtained from the pattern-preserving previews, and significant disruption to processing was obtained from the previews that contained transposed root letters, particularly when this letter transposition created a new real root. The results thus reflect Arabic readers' dependance on morphological and semantic information, and suggest that these levels of representation are accessed as early as orthographic information. Implications for theory- and model-building, and the need to accommodate early morphological and semantic processing activities in more comprehensive models are further discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ehab W. Hermena
- Department of Psychology, Cognition and Neuroscience Research Laboratory, College of Natural and Health Sciences, Zayed University, Dubai, UAE
- * E-mail:
| | - Eida J. Juma
- Department of Psychology, Cognition and Neuroscience Research Laboratory, College of Natural and Health Sciences, Zayed University, Dubai, UAE
| | - Maryam AlJassmi
- Department of Psychology, Cognition and Neuroscience Research Laboratory, College of Natural and Health Sciences, Zayed University, Dubai, UAE
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38
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Labusch M, Kotz SA, Perea M. The impact of capitalized German words on lexical access. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2021; 86:891-902. [PMID: 34091714 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-021-01540-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2020] [Accepted: 05/25/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Leading models of visual word recognition assume that the process of word identification is driven by abstract, case-invariant units (e.g., table and TABLE activate the same abstract representation). But do these models need to be modified to meet nuances of orthography as in German, where the first letter of common nouns is capitalized (e.g., Buch [book] and Hund [dog], but blau [blue])? To examine the role of initial capitalization of German words in lexical access, we chose a semantic categorization task ("is the word an animal name?"). In Experiment 1, we compared German words in all-lowercase vs. initial capitalization (hund, buch, blau vs. Hund, Buch, Blau). Results showed faster responses for animal nouns with initial capitalization (Hund < hund) and faster responses for lowercase non-nouns (blau < Blau). Surprisingly, we found faster responses for lowercase non-animal nouns (buch < Buch). As the latter difference could derive from task demands (i.e., buch does not follow German orthographic rules and requires a "no" response), we replaced the all-lowercase format with an orthographically legal all-uppercase format in Experiment 2. Results showed an advantage for all nouns with initial capitalization (Hund < HUND and Buch < BUCH). These findings clearly show that initial capitalization in German words constitutes an essential part of the words' representations and is used during lexical access. Thus, models of visual word recognition, primarily focused on English orthography, should be expanded to the idiosyncrasies of other Latin-based orthographies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Melanie Labusch
- Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.,Departamento de Metodología, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 40610, Valencia, Spain
| | - Sonja A Kotz
- Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
| | - Manuel Perea
- Departamento de Metodología, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 40610, Valencia, Spain. .,Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain.
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González-Valenzuela MJ, López-Montiel D, Díaz-Giráldez F, Martín-Ruiz I. Effect of Cognitive Variables on the Reading Ability of Spanish Children at Age Seven. Front Psychol 2021; 12:663596. [PMID: 34040568 PMCID: PMC8141576 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.663596] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2021] [Accepted: 04/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/05/2022] Open
Abstract
The objective of this study is to determine the contribution made by knowledge of letters, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric rapid automatized naming at the ages of six and seven to the ability of Spanish children to read words at 7 years of age. A total of 116 Spanish-speaking school children took part in the study, from schools located in an average socio-cultural setting, without special educational needs. The reading ability of these pupils was evaluated at the age of seven, and cognitive variables were assessed at 6 and 7 years of age. Descriptive-exploratory analyses, bivariate analyses, and multivariate regressions were performed. The results show that cognitive variables measured at these ages contribute differently to the ability to read words at 7 years of age. Rapid naming does not seem to influence word reading; knowledge of letters no longer influences word reading as children grow older; and phonological awareness and phonological memory maintain their contribution to the explanation of word reading. These results indicate that reading in Spanish depends on different cognitive variables and that this relationship varies according to age. The findings have key educational implications in terms of teaching reading skills and the prevention of specific learning difficulties in Spanish Primary Education.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Dolores López-Montiel
- Departamento de Psicobiología y Metodología de las Ciencias del Comportamiento, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain
| | - Félix Díaz-Giráldez
- Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain
| | - Isaías Martín-Ruiz
- Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain
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The dynamics of morphological processing in developing readers: A cross-linguistic masked priming study. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 208:105140. [PMID: 33831608 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105140] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2020] [Revised: 02/25/2021] [Accepted: 03/02/2021] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Empirical evidence from masked priming research shows that skilled readers can rapidly identify morphological structure in written language. However, comparatively little is known about how and when this skill is acquired in children. The current work investigated the developmental trajectory of morphological processing in a 2-year longitudinal study involving two large cohorts of German and French primary school children. The masked priming paradigm was used within an experimental design that allowed us to dissociate effects of (a) nonmorphological embedded word activation, (b) morpho-orthographic decomposition, and (c) morpho-semantics. Four priming conditions were used: affixed word (farmer-FARM), affixed nonword (farmity-FARM), nonaffixed nonword (farmald-FARM), and unrelated control (workald-FARM). The results revealed robust embedded word priming effects across both languages. However, morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic effects were evident only in the French sample. These findings are discussed in the context of a theoretical framework that specifies the distinct roles played by embedded words and affixes, their distinct developmental trajectories, and how the intrinsic linguistic properties of a given language may affect morphological processing.
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Hassanein EEA, Johnson ES, Alshaboul Y, Ibrahim S, Megreya A, Al-Hendawi M, Al-Attiyah A. Developing a Test of Early Arabic Literacy Skills. READING PSYCHOLOGY 2021. [DOI: 10.1080/02702711.2021.1888349] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Evelyn S. Johnson
- Department of Early and Special Education, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA
| | - Yousef Alshaboul
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Sayed Ibrahim
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Ahmed Megreya
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Maha Al-Hendawi
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Asma Al-Attiyah
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
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Lee CH, Lally C, Rastle K. Masked transposition priming effects are observed in Korean in the same-different task. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2021; 74:1439-1450. [PMID: 33573527 PMCID: PMC8261773 DOI: 10.1177/1747021821997336] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Research suggests that readers of Korean Hangul demonstrate precise
orthographic coding. In contrast to findings from many other
languages, the identification of Hangul words is not speeded by prior
masked presentation of transposition primes relative to substitution
primes. The present studies asked whether evidence for precise
orthographic coding is also observed in the same–different task—a task
claimed to reflect pre-lexical orthographic representations.
Experiments tested whether masked transposed-letter (Experiment 1) or
transposed-syllable-block (Experiment 2) primes facilitate judgements
about whether a target matches a reference stimulus. In contrast to
previous results using lexical decision, significant transposition
effects were observed in both cases. These findings add weight to the
proposition that apparent differences across writing systems in the
precision of orthographic coding may reflect demands of the word
identification process rather than properties of orthographic
representations themselves.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chang H Lee
- Department of Psychology, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea
| | - Clare Lally
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
| | - Kathleen Rastle
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
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Wong YK, Tong CKY, Lui M, Wong ACN. Perceptual expertise with Chinese characters predicts Chinese reading performance among Hong Kong Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0243440. [PMID: 33481782 PMCID: PMC7822259 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243440] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2020] [Accepted: 11/21/2020] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
This study explores the theoretical proposal that developmental dyslexia involves a failure to develop perceptual expertise with words despite adequate education. Among a group of Hong Kong Chinese children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia, we investigated the relationship between Chinese word reading and perceptual expertise with Chinese characters. In a perceptual fluency task, the time of visual exposure to Chinese characters was manipulated and limited such that the speed of discrimination of a short sequence of Chinese characters at an accuracy level of 80% was estimated. Pair-wise correlations showed that perceptual fluency for characters predicted speeded and non-speeded word reading performance. Exploratory hierarchical regressions showed that perceptual fluency for characters accounted for 5.3% and 9.6% variance in speeded and non-speeded reading respectively, in addition to age, non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and perceptual fluency for digits. The findings suggest that perceptual expertise with words plays an important role in Chinese reading performance in developmental dyslexia, and that perceptual training is a potential remediation direction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yetta Kwailing Wong
- Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | | | - Ming Lui
- Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China
| | - Alan C.-N. Wong
- Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
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Letter identity and visual similarity in the processing of diacritic letters. Mem Cognit 2021; 49:815-825. [PMID: 33469882 PMCID: PMC7614445 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-020-01125-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Are letters with a diacritic (e.g., â) recognized as a variant of the base letter (e.g., a), or as a separate letter identity? Two recent masked priming studies, one in French and one in Spanish, investigated this question, concluding that this depends on the language-specific linguistic function served by the diacritic. Experiment 1 tested this linguistic function hypothesis using Japanese kana, in which diacritics signal consonant voicing, and like French and unlike Spanish, provide lexical contrast. Contrary to the hypothesis, Japanese kana yielded the pattern of diacritic priming like Spanish. Specifically, for a target kana with a diacritic (e.g., ガ, /ga/), the kana prime without the diacritic (e.g., カ, /ka/) facilitated recognition almost as much as the identity prime (e.g., ガ-ガ = カ-ガ), whereas for a target kana without a diacritic, the kana prime with the diacritic produced less facilitation than the identity prime (e.g., カ-カ < ガ-カ). We suggest that the pattern of diacritic priming has little to do with linguistic function, and instead it stems from a general property of visual object recognition. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis using visually similar letters of the Latin alphabet that differ in the presence/absence of a visual feature (e.g., O and Q). The same asymmetry in priming was observed. These findings are consistent with the noisy channel model of letter/word recognition (Norris & Kinoshita, Psychological Review, 119, 517-545, 2012a).
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Using information-theoretic measures to characterize the structure of the writing system: the case of orthographic-phonological regularities in English. Behav Res Methods 2020; 52:1292-1312. [PMID: 31950361 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-019-01317-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
It is generally well accepted that proficient reading requires the assimilation of myriad statistical regularities present in the writing system, including in particular the correspondences between words' orthographic and phonological forms. There is considerably less agreement, however, as to how to quantify these regularities. Here we present a comprehensive approach for this quantification using tools from Information Theory. We start by providing a glossary of the relevant information-theoretic metrics, with simplified examples showing their potential in assessing orthographic-phonological regularities. We specifically highlight the flexibility of our approach in quantifying information under different contexts (i.e., context-independent and dependent readings) and in different types of mappings (e.g., orthography-to-phonology and phonology-to-orthography). Then, we use these information-theoretic measures to assess real-world orthographic-phonological regularities of 10,093 mono-syllabic English words and examine whether these measures predict inter-item variability in accuracy and response times using available large-scale datasets of naming and lexical decision tasks. Together, the analyses demonstrate how information-theoretical measures can be used to quantify orthographical-phonological correspondences, and show that they capture variance in reading performance that is not accounted for by existing measures. We discuss the similarities and differences between the current framework and previous approaches as well as future directions towards understanding how the statistical regularities embedded in a writing system impact reading and reading acquisition.
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Winskel H. Insights into reading processes through investigating diversity. AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/ajpy.12136] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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A general role for ventral white matter pathways in morphological processing: Going beyond reading. Neuroimage 2020; 226:117577. [PMID: 33221439 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117577] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2020] [Revised: 10/13/2020] [Accepted: 11/11/2020] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability to recognize the structural components of words, known as morphological processing, was recently associated with the bilateral ventral white matter pathways, across different writing systems. However, it remains unclear whether these associations are specific to the context of reading. To shed light on this question, in the current study we investigated whether the ventral pathways are associated with morphological processing in an oral word production task that does not involve reading. Forty-five participants completed a morpheme-based fluency task in Hebrew, as well as diffusion MRI (dMRI) scans. We used probabilistic tractography to segment the major ventral and dorsal white matter pathways, and assessed the correlations between their microstructural properties and performance on the morpheme-based fluency task. We found significant correlations between morpheme-based fluency and properties of the bilateral ventral tracts, suggesting that the involvement of these tracts in morphological processing extends beyond the reading modality. In addition, significant correlations were found in the frontal aslant tract (FAT), a dorsal tract associated with oral fluency and speech production. Together, our findings emphasize that neurocognitive associations reflect both the cognitive construct under investigation as well as the task used for its assessment. Lastly, to elucidate the biological factors underlying these correlations, we incorporated the composite hindered and restricted model of diffusion (CHARMED) framework, measured in independent scans. We found that only some of our findings could be attributed to variation in a CHARMED-based estimate of fiber density. Further, we were able to uncover additional correlations that could not be detected using traditional dMRI indices. In sum, our results show that the involvement of the ventral tracts in morphological processing extends to the production domain, and demonstrate the added value of including sensitive structural measurements in neurocognitive investigations.
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Chyl K, Kossowski B, Wang S, Dębska A, Łuniewska M, Marchewka A, Wypych M, Bunt MVD, Mencl W, Pugh K, Jednoróg K. The brain signature of emerging reading in two contrasting languages. Neuroimage 2020; 225:117503. [PMID: 33130273 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117503] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/18/2020] [Revised: 10/16/2020] [Accepted: 10/18/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite dissimilarities among scripts, a universal hallmark of literacy in skilled readers is the convergent brain activity for print and speech. Little is known, however, whether this differs as a function of grapheme to phoneme transparency in beginning readers. Here we compare speech and orthographic processing circuits in two contrasting languages, Polish and English, in 100 7-year-old children performing fMRI language localizer tasks. Results show limited language variation, with speech-print convergence evident mostly in left frontotemporal perisylvian regions. Correlational and intersect analyses revealed subtle differences in the strength of this coupling in several regions of interest. Specifically, speech-print convergence was higher for transparent Polish than opaque English in the right temporal area, associated with phonological processing. Conversely, speech-print convergence was higher for English than Polish in left fusiform, associated with visual word recognition. We conclude that speech-print convergence is a universal marker of reading even at the beginning of reading acquisition with minor variations that can be explained by the differences in grapheme to phoneme transparency. This finding at the earliest stages of reading acquisition conforms well with claims that reading exhibits a good deal of universality despite writing systems differences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katarzyna Chyl
- Laboratory of Language Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland.
| | - Bartosz Kossowski
- Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Shuai Wang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, East China Normal University, China; CNRS, LPL, Aix Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France; Institute of Language, Communication and the Brain, Brain and Language Research Institute, Aix Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Agnieszka Dębska
- Laboratory of Language Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Magdalena Łuniewska
- Laboratory of Language Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Artur Marchewka
- Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Marek Wypych
- Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland
| | | | | | - Kenneth Pugh
- Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
| | - Katarzyna Jednoróg
- Laboratory of Language Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Warsaw, Poland.
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El Akiki C, Content A. Early Sensitivity to Morphology in Beginning Readers of Arabic. Front Psychol 2020; 11:552315. [PMID: 33071873 PMCID: PMC7538675 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.552315] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2020] [Accepted: 08/12/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The current study investigated the influence of morphological structure on the earliest stages of Arabic reading acquisition. More specifically, we aimed at examining the role of root and pattern units in beginners from Grade 1 to 3. A first set of reading tasks evaluated the presence of a morphology facilitation effect in word and pseudoword reading by manipulating independently the frequency of roots and patterns. Additional tasks aimed at examining the contribution of morphological awareness to reading performance. The results suggest that reading ability is early influenced by the awareness of morphological composition. Children read faster and more accurately pseudowords composed of frequent morphemes. Furthermore, regression analyses revealed, for every reading measure, a significant contribution of one morphological test in addition to grapheme knowledge. Results are discussed taking into account the differences obtained depending on lexicality and morpheme type (root or pattern).
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Affiliation(s)
- Carole El Akiki
- Laboratoire Cognition Langage et Développement, Center of Research in Cognition & Neurosciences, ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.,Speech Therapy Department, Faculty of Public Health II, Lebanese University, Fanar, Lebanon
| | - Alain Content
- Laboratoire Cognition Langage et Développement, Center of Research in Cognition & Neurosciences, ULB Neuroscience Institute, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium
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Siegelman N, Rueckl JG, Steacy LM, Frost SJ, van den Bunt M, Zevin JD, Seidenberg MS, Pugh KR, Compton DL, Morris RD. Individual differences in learning the regularities between orthography, phonology and semantics predict early reading skills. JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 2020; 114:104145. [PMID: 32694882 PMCID: PMC7373223 DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2020.104145] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
Statistical views of literacy development maintain that proficient reading requires the assimilation of myriad statistical regularities present in the writing system. Indeed, previous studies have tied statistical learning (SL) abilities to reading skills, establishing the existence of a link between the two. However, some issues are currently left unanswered, including questions regarding the underlying bases for these associations as well as the types of statistical regularities actually assimilated by developing readers. Here we present an alternative approach to study the role of SL in literacy development, focusing on individual differences among beginning readers. Instead of using an artificial task to estimate SL abilities, our approach identifies individual differences in children's reliance on statistical regularities as reflected by actual reading behavior. We specifically focus on individuals' reliance on regularities in the mapping between print and speech versus associations between print and meaning in a word naming task. We present data from 399 children, showing that those whose oral naming performance is impacted more by print-speech regularities and less by associations between print and meaning have better reading skills. These findings suggest that a key route by which SL mechanisms impact developing reading abilities is via their role in the assimilation of sub-lexical regularities between printed and spoken language -and more generally, in detecting regularities that are more reliable than others. We discuss the implications of our findings to both SL and reading theories.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Kenneth R. Pugh
- Haskins Laboratories
- University of Connecticut
- Yale University
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