The neural code for written words: a proposal

How is reading, a cultural invention, coded by neural populations in the human brain? The neural code for written words must be abstract, because we can recognize words regardless of their location, font and size. Yet it must also be exquisitely sensitive to letter identity and letter order. Most existing coding schemes are insufficiently invariant or incompatible with the constraints of the visual system. We propose a tentative neuronal model according to which part of the occipito-temporal 'what' pathway is tuned to writing and forms a hierarchy of local combination detectors sensitive to increasingly larger fragments of words. Our proposal can explain why the detection of 'open bigrams' (ordered pairs of letters) constitutes an important stage in visual word recognition.     

Typeface emphasis and information focus in written language

This paper looks at the typographical resource of written emphasis (changing the typeface style on specific words or passages within text)–for signalling information focus. Some investigations into the effects of two conventional typefaces, upper case and italic, for signalling modulatory and contrastive stress upon word content are reported, illustrating the effectiveness of strategies using this resource for economically transmitting intended content from writer to reader. At this time of heightened interest in writing competence, and the potential of electronic writing systems for providing more typographical resources to the author than were available with pen-and-paper or typewriting modes, the function of paralinguistic signalling within written language is suggested as a key issue for research.     

Improving written language performance of adolescents with Asperger syndrome

The effects of a multicomponent intervention involving self-regulated strategy development delivered via video self-modeling on the written language performance of 3 students with Asperger syndrome were examined. During intervention sessions, each student watched a video of himself performing strategies for increasing the number of words written and the number of functional essay elements. He then wrote a persuasive essay. The number of words written and number of functional essay elements included in each essay were measured. Each student demonstrated gains in the number of words written and number of functional essay elements. Maintenance of treatment effects at follow-up varied across targets and participants. Implications for future research are suggested.     

Synesthesia in children with difficulties in written language learning

We tested whether the acquisition of grapheme-color synesthesia during childhood is related to difficulties in written language learning by measuring whether it is more frequent in 79 children receiving speech and language therapy for such difficulties than in the general population of children (1.3%). By using criteria as similar as possible to those used in the reference study (Simner et al., 2009), we did not identify any synesthete (Bayesian 95% credible interval [0, 4.5]% for a flat prior). The odds of the null model (no difference between 0/79 and 1.3%) over alternative models is 28 (Bayes Factor). A higher prevalence of grapheme-color synesthetes among children with learning difficulties is therefore very unlikely, questioning the hypothesis of a link between synesthesia and difficulties in language acquisition. We also describe the difficulty of diagnosing synesthesia in children and discuss the need for new approaches to do so.     

Finding common ground: Alternatives to code models for language use

The papers in this special issue offer valuable perspectives on public language activities as they are embedded in cultural and social contexts. The perspectives are diverse in their theoretical perspectives, the issues on which they focus, and the methodologies they use and promote using. They represent language studies from the perspective of ecological psychology, dynamical systems approaches, the Distributed Language Approach, and others. The contributions are, in some cases, revolutionary and dis-equilibrating. Different contributions to the special issue offer critiques of conventional scientific studies of decontextualized language and language processing, and offer new perspectives on such diverse domains as the understanding of agency, the study of reading, educational practice, and understanding how articulatory speech actions can have significance beyond that of the physical actions themselves.     

Neuropsychological experiments on transcoding between spoken and written language structures

This study examines the transcoding of word structures in the spoken linguistic sign system into the corresponding patterns of the written linguistic sign system and vice versa. Of a group of aphasic patients including some who had impairments of auditory word comprehension, of visual word comprehension, or of both, it is shown that the frequency of successful transcoding was extremely high, approximately 85%. This success is due to transcoding processes on the phoneme-grapheme level rather than on the semantic level of language. A small group of patients who failed the auditory-visual matching tests provide evidence of a separate transcoding deficit.     

Linguistic flexibility in signed and written language productions of deaf children

Linguistic flexibility of deaf and hearing children was compared by examining the relative frequencies of their nonliteral constructions in stories written and signed (by the deaf) or written and spoken (by the hearing). Seven types of nonliteral constructions were considered: novel figurative language, frozen figurative language, gestures, pantomime, linguistic modifications, linguistic inventions, and lexical substitutions. Among the hearing 8- to 15-year-olds, oral and written stories contained comparable numbers of nonliteral constructions. Among their age-matched deaf peers, however, nonliteral constructions were significantly stories contained comparable numbers of nonliteral constructions. Among their age-matched deaf peers, however, nonliteral constructions were significantly more common in signed than written stories. Overall, hearing students used more nonliteral constructions in their written stories than did their deaf peers (who used very few), whereas deaf students used more nonliteral constructions in their signed stories than their hearing peers did in their spoken stories. The results suggest that deaf children are linguistically and cognitively more competent than is generally assumed on the basis of evaluations in English. Although inferior to hearing age-mates in written expression, they are comparable to, and in some ways better than those peers when evaluated using their primary mode of communication.     

Relationship between levels of oral and written language in beginning readers

The validity of a test battery, organized by a theoretical framework of levels of language processing and production, was evaluated at the end of kindergarten and theend of first grade. At the end of kindergarten two levels of oral language, phonemic and lexical, and at the end of first grade three levels of oral language, phonemic, lexical, and text, were correlated with word decoding and reading comprehension. At the end of first grade, the combination of phonemic and lexical skills accounted for more variance in both word decoding and reading comprehension than either phonemic or lexical skills alone. The strength of the relationship between specific levels of oral language and specific component reading skills changed after formal reading instruction was introduced. Functional relationships were found between improvement in phonemic skills or lexical skills and improvement in word decoding. Partial correlations between two levels of oral language with a third partialed out (receptive or expressive task requirements held constant) provided evidence for three semiindependent levels of oral language—phonemic, lexical, and text. Because the battery has concurrent and construct validity, school psychologists can use it to monitor beginning readers in order to prevent reading disabilities due to subtle language dysfunctions.     

Oral and written language in a case of childhood phonemic deafness

Neuropsychologic and neurolinguistic studies performed on an 11-year-old Landau-Kleffner boy are reported. At age 3 his language began to deteriorate progressively until complete disappearance. At the same time, the patient developed epileptic seizures. When 6 years old, he was taught to match objects to the corresponding written word, and subsequently he was able to learn reading and writing to such extent that he could attend primary school. BAER and primary cortical auditory responses were normal, whereas late cortical components were grossly retarded and distorted. Phonemic discrimination, identification, and production were absent, and in contrast, lexical-semantic abilities tested through reading and writing were normal. In visual STM tasks, phonologic mediation was absent. The role of phonologic mediation in language acquisition is then hypothesized.     

Grammatical awareness in the spoken and written language of language-disabled children

Experiments examined grammatical judgement, and error-identification deficits in relation to expressive language skills and to morphemic errors in writing. Language-disabled subjects did not differ from language-matched controls on judgement, revision, or error identification. Age-matched controls represented more morphemes in elicited writing than either of the other groups, which were equivalent. However, in spontaneous writing, language-disabled subjects made more frequent morphemic errors than age-matched controls, but language-matched subjects did not differ from either group. Proficiency relative to academic experience and oral language status and to remedial implications are discussed.     

Verbal, visual, and spatial working memory in written language production

College students wrote definitions of either abstract or concrete nouns in longhand while performing a concurrent working memory (WM) task. They detected either a verbal (syllable), visual (shape), or spatial (location) stimulus and decided whether it matched the last one presented 15-45s earlier. Writing definitions of both noun types elevated the response time to verbal targets above baseline. Such interference was observed for visual targets only when defining concrete nouns and was eliminated entirely with spatial targets. The interference effect for verbal targets was the same whether they were read or heard, implicating phonological storage. The findings suggest that language production requires phonological or verbal WM. Visual WM is selectively engaged when imaging the referents of concrete nouns.     

The reliability and validity of a measure of reported affinity for figurative language

Figurative language, as the linguistic expression of metaphoric thought, occupies a central place in the study of human cognition and creativity. This article describes four initial investigations of the reliability and validity of a measure of affinity for figurative language. In Study 1, a factor analysis of the Language Preference Report (LPR) yielded three orthogonally rotated components of affinity for figurative language: Liking to Produce Figurative Language, General Dislike of Figurative Language, and Liking to Study Texts Which Include Figurative Language. The factors, based on 540 responses, accounted for 73% of the total variance and were correlated with each other (absolute values between .55 and .36). Study 2, based on repeated administrations to 103 students at 2‐week intervals, investigated the reliability of the LPR Internal consistency estimates ranged from .92 to .84, and test‐retest reliability estimates ranged from .86 to .69. In Study 3, 39 students responded to both the LPR and the Similes Test. Participants’ Similes Test scores were significantly correlated with the LPR Production factor (r = .53, p < .001) and the Study factor (V = .36, p < .05). In Study 4, 79 students completed the LPR and later read 3000 words of text in which they were presented with 20 opportunities to choose figurative or literal sentence completions. The number of figurative completions chosen was significantly correlated with the LPR Dislike factor (r = ‐.65, p < .0001), the Study factor (r = .63, p <. 0001), and the Production factor (r = .50, p < .001). These findings support the conclusion that this measure of affinity for figurative language is sufficiently reliable and valid for researching individual differences in creativity, problem solving, language production, and learning from text.     

Generating inferences from written and spoken language: A comparison of children with visual impairment and children with sight

The two experiments reported here investigated the ability of sighted children and children with visual impairment to comprehend text and, in particular, to draw inferences both while reading and while listening. Children were assigned into ‘comprehension skill’ groups, depending on the degree to which their reading comprehension skill was in line with that predicted by their decoding skill. They then read (either print or Braille) and listened to a series of novel short stories. These were followed by a series of questions, which required either the generation of inferences, or an answer that could be taken literally from the text. The results suggest that children with and without sight are comparable in their ability to draw inferences, and that children with visual impairment show an advantage for literal questions under auditory presentation.