The Enhanced Literate Mind Hypothesis

In the present paper, we describe the Enhanced Literate Mind (ELM) hypothesis. As individuals learn to read and write, they are, from then on, exposed to extensive written-language input and become literate. We propose that acquisition and proficient processing of written language ("literacy") leads to, both, increased language knowledge as well as enhanced language and nonlanguage (perceptual and cognitive) skills. We also suggest that all neurotypical native language users, including illiterate, low literate, and high literate individuals, share a Basic Language Cognition (BLC) in the domain of oral informal language. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the acquisition of ELM leads to some degree of "knowledge parallelism" between BLC and ELM in literate language users, which has implications for empirical research on individual and situational differences in spoken language processing.

NSP-SCD: A corpus construction protocol for child-directed print in understudied languages

Child-directed print corpora enable systematic psycholinguistic investigations, but this research infrastructure is not available in many understudied languages. Moreover, researchers of understudied languages are dependent on manual tagging because precise automatized parsers are not yet available. One plausible way forward is to limit the intensive work to a small-sized corpus. However, with little systematic enquiry about approaches to corpus construction, it is unclear how robust a small corpus can be made. The current study examines the potential of a non-sequential sampling protocol for small corpus development (NSP-SCD) through a cross-corpora and within-corpus analysis. A corpus comprising 17,584 words was developed by applying the protocol to a larger corpus of 150,595 words from children's books for 3-to-10-year-olds. While the larger corpus will by definition have more instances of unique words and unique orthographic units, still, the selectively sampled small corpus approximated the larger corpus for lexical and orthographic diversity and was equivalent for orthographic representation and word length. Psycholinguistic complexity increased by book level and varied by parts of speech. Finally, in a robustness check of lexical diversity, the non-sequentially sampled small corpus was more efficient compared to a same-sized corpus constructed by simply using all sentences from a few books (402 books vs. seven books). If a small corpus must be used then non-sequential sampling from books stratified by book level makes the corpus statistics better approximate what is found in larger corpora. Overall, the protocol shows promise as a tool to advance the science of child language acquisition in understudied languages.

Written Language Characteristics of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Terms of the Components of the Language

Hearing has vital importance for language development. Deaf and hard of hearing children have problems in spoken and written language due to hearing loss. The development of written language is directly related to language skills such as listening, speaking, and reading skills. This study aims to evaluate the use of language components in written language in deaf and hard of hearing students. In the study, writing samples of eight deaf and hard of hearing students who continue 4th grade in the school for the deaf were taken and error analysis was conducted. Besides, interviews were made with their classroom teacher about their language development, and in-class observations were conducted. It was seen as a result of the study that deaf and hard of hearing students have significant difficulties in all components of language in written language.

The unique contribution of handwriting accuracy to literacy skills in Japanese adolescents

There is widespread concern about declining literacy skills in recent young Japanese. The present study investigated how higher-level reading and writing proficiencies are underpinned by basic literacy skills in Japanese adolescents. From a large database of the most popular literacy exams in Japan, we retrospectively analyzed word- and text-level data for middle and high school students who had taken the exams during the same period in the 2019 academic year using structural equation modeling. We extracted main data for 161 students as well as six independent datasets for validation. Our results validated the three-dimensional view of word-level literacy (reading accuracy, writing accuracy, and semantic comprehension) and demonstrated that writing and semantic skills underpinned text writing and reading, respectively. The semantic comprehension of words affected text writing indirectly via text reading; however, it could not replace the direct effect of word writing accuracy. These findings, which were robustly replicated with multiple independent datasets, provided new evidence of dimension-specific relationships between word- and text-level literacy skills and confirmed the unique contribution of word handwriting acquisition to text literacy proficiency. The replacement of handwriting by digital writing (e.g., typing) is a global trend. However, the dual-pathway model of literacy development identified in this study suggests there are advantages in sustaining early literacy education by handwriting for the growth of higher-level language skills in future generations.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11145-023-10433-3.

A Preliminary Study of Writing Skills in Adolescents with Autism Across Persuasive, Expository, and Narrative Genres

Writing is often difficult for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet relatively little literature exists that profiles specific strengths and needs within this area. This preliminary investigation compares the written language skills of adolescents with ASD without intellectual disability (n = 14) to typically developing (TD) adolescents (n = 12). Writing samples from persuasive, expository, and narrative genres were elicited. Variables of sample length, writing productivity, syntax, lexical diversity, and macrostructure were analyzed. In the persuasive and expository genres, the ASD group scored significantly lower than the TD group on sample length and some aspects of macrostructure. The ASD group scored higher than the TD group on lexical diversity in the persuasive genre. Other comparisons yielded large effect sizes but were not statistically significant.