阅读发展相关的认知技能：汉语和英语的比较

对英语和汉语阅读获得所需要的认知技能及发展性阅读障碍儿童认知缺陷的研究进行了回顾。分析表明阅读发展所需认知资源表现出了跨语言的一致性,都要求有充足的学习与记忆能力和正常的视觉正字法技能,语音和语义知识表征足够精细;阅读障碍儿童的主要认知缺陷也表现出了跨文字的一致性,都包括语音缺陷和一般的学习与记忆问题。然而儿童所面临的语言文字特性会影响到阅读技能获得的难易和发展性阅读障碍的表现     

Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia in German

Recent research with English developmental dyslexics comparing the picture naming performance of these children to the picture naming performance of non-dyslexic (‘garden variety’) poor readers, reading age matched controls and chronological age matched controls has suggested that a selective difficulty in retrieving the phonological codes of known names on demand underlies the picture naming deficit found in developmental dyslexia (Swan & Goswami, Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia: the phonological representations hypothesis, Brain and Language, 56 (1997), 334–353). If the underlying causal factors in dyslexia are independent of the orthography that the child is learning to read, then a difficulty in retrieving the phonological codes of known names on demand should also be found in developmental dyslexics who are learning to read other languages. We therefore set out to replicate Swan and Goswami’s study with a group of German developmental dyslexics. We were interested to see whether a phonological deficit is characteristic of dyslexia in all orthographies, even those, such as German, in which high orthographic transparency means that dyslexic children read with considerable accuracy.     

Phonological priming and orthographic analogies in reading

Recent work has demonstrated that children can use orthographic analogies between the spelling patterns in words to help in decoding new words (e.g., using beak to read peak; Goswami, 1986, 1988). However, one objection has been that these analogy effects may be due to phonological priming. Two experiments examined the phonological priming alternative. In Experiment 1, a single word reading task compared the use of analogies to read words that shared both orthography and phonology (e.g., most-post), that shared orthography only (e.g., most-cost), or that shared phonology only (e.g. most-toast--the phonological priming condition). Limited effects of phonological priming were found. Experiment 2 then presented the same words embedded in prose passages--"real reading." While the orthographic analogy effect remained robust, the small phonological priming effect disappeared. It is argued that phonological priming is an insufficient explanation of the analogy effect at the single word level, and plays no role in the use of analogies in story reading.     

Acquired dyslexia in Spanish: a review and some observations on a new case of deep dyslexia

Readers and writers of Spanish use an orthography that is highly transparent. It has been proposed that readers of Spanish can rely on grapheme-phoneme correspondences, alone, to access meaning or phonology from print. In recent years, a number of case studies have yielded evidence inconsistent with this idea. We review these studies with particular focus on those that report evidence for reading based on direct lexical mappings between print, orthographic representations, and meaning or phonology. We report a new case of acquired literacy impairment in Spanish, MJ, who presents a pattern of preserved abilities and deficits symptomatic of deep dyslexia. The patient is unable to read nonwords, but can read a substantial number of words. Her reading is characterized by the production of semantic, visual, and derivational errors. We argue that MJ has a deficit in her lexical selection ability, common to both her reading and her naming problems. We propose that MJ, and the other cases we review, demonstrate that lexical reading is adopted by skilled readers even in a transparent language.     

The role of phonology during visual word learning in adults: An integrative review

Throughout their lifetime, adults learn new words in their native lannguage, and potentially also in a second language. However, they do so with variable levels of success. In the auditory word learning literature, some of this variability has been attributed to phonological skills, including decoding and phonological short-term memory. Here I examine how the relationship between phonological skills and word learning applies to the visual modality. I define the availability of phonology in terms of (1) the extent to which it is biased by the learning environment, (2) the characteristics of the words to be learned, and (3) individual differences in phonological skills. Across these three areas of research, visual word learning improves when phonology is made more available to adult learners, suggesting that phonology can facilitate learning across modalities. However, the facilitation is largely specific to alphabetic languages, which have predictable sublexical correspondences between orthography and phonology. Therefore, I propose that phonology bootstraps visual word learning by providing a secondary code that constrains and refines developing orthographic representations.

     

汉语阅读障碍的语音加工及正字法加工缺陷的实验研究

本研究对汉语阅读障碍的加工缺陷进行探讨,期望有助于揭示语言加工的普遍性与特殊性,以及阅读障碍的成因,并可为后期的干预提供帮助。研究采用改编的言语认知测验对阅读水平匹配组与阅读障碍组和生理年龄匹配组进行比较后发现,阅读障碍组在语音意识和正字法加工任务上的成绩均明显差于生理年龄控制组和阅读水平匹配组;阅读障碍组在快速命名和语音记忆任务上的成绩不如生理年龄匹配组,仅达到阅读水平匹配组水平。因此,汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童存在语音意识和正字法加工缺陷,这两种缺陷可能是阅读障碍儿童面临的最主要的两大缺陷;阅读障碍儿童在快速命名和语音记忆上的不足可能是发展迟滞所致。同时,大多数的汉语阅读障碍儿童存在不止一种的认知缺陷。阅读障碍儿童在语音意识和正字法加工上存在缺陷的比例最高。     

Effective brain connectivity in children with reading difficulties during phonological processing

Using Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined effective connectivity between three left hemisphere brain regions (inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, fusiform gyrus) and bilateral medial frontal gyrus in 12 children with reading difficulties (M age=12.4, range: 8.11-14.10) and 12 control children (M age=12.3, range: 8.9-14.11) during rhyming judgments to visually presented words. More difficult conflicting trials either had similar orthography but different phonology (e.g. pint-mint) or similar phonology but different orthography (e.g. jazz-has). Easier non-conflicting trials had similar orthography and phonology (e.g. dime-lime) or different orthography and phonology (e.g. staff-gain). The modulatory effect from left fusiform gyrus to left inferior parietal lobule was stronger in controls than in children with reading difficulties only for conflicting trials. Modulatory effects from left fusiform gyrus and left inferior parietal lobule to left inferior frontal gyrus were stronger for conflicting trials than for non-conflicting trials only in control children but not in children with reading difficulties. Modulatory effects from left inferior frontal gyrus to inferior parietal lobule, from medial frontal gyrus to left inferior parietal lobule, and from left inferior parietal lobule to medial frontal gyrus were positively correlated with reading skill only in control children. These findings suggest that children with reading difficulties have deficits in integrating orthography and phonology utilizing left inferior parietal lobule, and in engaging phonological rehearsal/segmentation utilizing left inferior frontal gyrus possibly through the indirect pathway connecting posterior to anterior language processing regions, especially when the orthographic and phonological information is conflicting.     

The role of phonology in incidental vocabulary acquisition during silent reading

In two experiments, we investigated the role of phonology in learning new words incidentally during silent reading. Participants read sentence pairs containing novel or known words that varied in homophony (whether another word exists with an alternate spelling for the same pronunciation). In Experiment 1, we monitored readers' eye movements to investigate online processes involved in establishing meanings for novel words. In Experiment 2, participants completed cued recall and vocabulary recognition tasks after the reading session to assess the influence of phonological form on word learning. Eye movement results indicate that readers spent the most time reading novel homophones (e.g., skwosh) and surrounding context, indicating that phonological information is activated early during a reader's initial encounter with a new letter string. Retention measures suggest that readers were able to infer a meaning for each novel word type, despite the increased difficulty associated with reading novel words with familiar phonological forms, and that phonology aided the acquisition of orthography.     

Effects of orthographic transparency on reading and phoneme awareness in children learning to read in Wales

The relationship between the development of reading skills and the consistency of the orthography (writing system) is investigated in a study that examines reading acquisition in children living in Wales. Performance of children learning to read Welsh (a transparent alphabetic orthography) on tests of reading and phoneme detection was compared with the performance of children learning to read English (an opaque alphabetic orthography). The children were tested during their second year of formal reading instruction at school when they were aged between 5 and 6 years, and again one year later. The children learning to read in Welsh performed significantly better at reading both real words and nonwords than children learning to read in English. The English readers made fewer phonologically based reading errors. The Welsh readers also performed better on a phoneme awareness task. These findings support the claim that children learn to read more quickly in a transparent orthography, and provide further evidence that the consistency of the orthography influences the initial adoption of different strategies for word recognition.     

Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: a psycholinguistic grain size theory

The development of reading depends on phonological awareness across all languages so far studied. Languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography. This results in developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies and the manifestation of dyslexia across orthographies. Differences in lexical representations and reading across languages leave developmental "footprints" in the adult lexicon. The lexical organization and processing strategies that are characteristic of skilled reading in different orthographies are affected by different developmental constraints in different writing systems. The authors develop a novel theoretical framework to explain these cross-language data, which they label a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading and its development.     

Becoming literate in different languages: similar problems, different solutions

The teaching of reading in different languages should be informed by an effective evidence base. Although most children will eventually become competent, indeed skilled, readers of their languages, the pre-reading (e.g. phonological awareness) and language skills that they bring to school may differ in systematic ways for different language environments. A thorough understanding of potential differences is required if literacy teaching is to be optimized in different languages. Here we propose a theoretical framework based on a psycholinguistic grain size approach to guide the collection of evidence in different countries. We argue that the development of reading depends on children's phonological awareness in all languages studied to date. However, we propose that because languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography, there are developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations, and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies across orthographies.     

联结竞争对听写困难儿童形音联结编码的影响

听写困难是一种发生率较高的儿童学习障碍现象。听写困难的认知机制,主要包括语音加工缺陷、字形表征缺陷以及形音联结编码缺陷。本研究通过两个实验,考察了整字语音竞争和部件语音竞争,对听写困难儿童形音联结编码的影响。结果发现,在不同条件下,听写困难儿童的形音联结水平都落后于正常儿童;整字语音竞争显著干扰了正常儿童的形音联结编码,但对听写困难儿童的影响并不明显;与之相反的是,部件语音竞争对听写困难儿童的干扰更为明显。研究结果支持听写困难儿童的形音联结编码缺陷理论。在此基础上,听写困难儿童的形音联结较少受到整字语音的竞争干扰,但更容易受到部件语音的竞争干扰,这可能是因为,他(她)们的整体字形加工或表征存在缺陷,导致原生字字形和语音信息难以被激活,以及合体字的部件信息得到更多的加工所致。     

Impaired oral reading in two atypical dyslexics: a comparison with a computational lexical-analogy model

A computational model of reading was developed based upon the notion that the structural relationship between orthography and phonology is of greater importance than the dimension of semantics for the reading aloud of single words. Degradation of this model successfully simulated the reading performance of two patients with atypical acquired dyslexia. The first patient CAV, studied and described in the literature by Warrington in 1981, presented with unusual concrete word dyslexia, i.e., he had a category-specific reading deficit for concrete words compared with abstract words. The second patient BG is a phonological dyslexic who, although displaying a strong concreteness effect (concrete words read better than abstract words), was able to read functors individually perfectly well, a pattern that is rarely if ever seen. The computational model was used to generate a set of words for which it was predicted that BG would show no concreteness effect. The results of BG's reading of these words were consistent with this prediction, thereby providing greater support for the validity of the model. It is concluded that a computational approach that attempts not only to reproduce the core symptoms of the major varieties of acquired dyslexia but also to simulate clinical data from specific patients has much to contribute to the understanding of cognitive deficits and to the design of effective rehabilitation strategies.     

Semantic and phonological influences on visual word learning in a transparent language

Orthographic representations of words are indispensable for reading fluency. The ways in which these representations are developed and their resistance to decay are hotly debated topics. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of semantic and phonological representations on the formation of orthographic representations in a transparent orthography. In order to achieve this objective, an experiment with three conditions was carried out. In the first condition, a group of university students were asked to repeatedly read 10 new words after semantic and phonological training, in the second condition another group of participants read the new words after phonological training, and in the third condition participants read without previous training. Finally, a follow-up session was performed to test the resistance to decay of the orthographic representations. The results showed that participants who had received semantic training formed the representations faster than participants in the other conditions, as indicated by the decrease in length effect. These results indicate the important role of previous knowledge when people face new written words. A month later these orthographic representations still remained in the lexicon of the participants.     

Testing the Role of Phonology in Reading: Focus on Sentence Processing

Most reading research investigating the role of phonology in word recognition has focused on studies employing an individual word as the sole stimulus. The bulk of such research has offered support for the phonological recoding hypothesis, the conjecture that access to a printed word’s meaning requires activation of the word’s phonology (i.e., meaning is not typically activated via orthography alone). A criticism of such studies is that by presenting participants with only a single word on each experimental trial (a nonecological manipulation), participants may alter their typical strategy of reading in such a way as to artificially favor the phonological recoding hypothesis. The present study avoided a focus on single words by requiring participants to read sentences and paragraphs for comprehension. Experiment 1 showed that, in reading a paragraph of connected sentences, eliminating a letter in a word that altered the phonology was more deleterious than eliminating a letter that did. Experiment 2 focused on the reading of each sentence itself rather than on the paragraph and provided additional control conditions. The results were similar to those of Experiment 1, consistent with the phonological recoding hypothesis.     

How long do the advantages of learning to read a transparent orthography last? An investigation of the reading skills and reading impairment of Welsh children at 10 years of age

Spencer and Hanley (2003) showed that Welsh-speaking children aged between 5 and 7 years who were learning to read Welsh (a transparent orthography) performed significantly better at reading both real words and nonwords than did English-speaking children living in Wales who were learning to read English (a deep orthography). In this study, the reading skills of these children were reexamined three years later, during their sixth year of formal reading instruction. The children learning to read English continued to perform poorly at reading low- and medium-frequency irregular words but no differences were observed in reading regular words or nonwords. These findings emphasize how long it takes to acquire a large sight vocabulary in English, but indicated that the reading skills of the majority of the English-speaking children had caught up with those of their Welsh-speaking counterparts. However, the poorest 25% of the English readers continued to perform much worse than the lowest performing 25% of Welsh readers on both words and nonwords. An underachieving tail of this kind was not observed in the reading performance of the Welsh-speaking group. Overall, these findings suggest that in the long term the detrimental effects of an opaque orthography are most damaging to the poorest readers.     

Visual rapid naming and phonological abilities: different subtypes in dyslexic children

One implication of the double-deficit hypothesis for dyslexia is that there should be subtypes of dyslexic readers that exhibit rapid naming deficits with or without concomitant phonological processing problems. In the current study, we investigated the validity of this hypothesis for Portuguese orthography, which is more consistent than English orthography, by exploring different cognitive profiles in a sample of dyslexic children. In particular, we were interested in identifying readers characterized by a pure rapid automatized naming deficit. We also examined whether rapid naming and phonological awareness independently account for individual differences in reading performance. We characterized the performance of dyslexic readers and a control group of normal readers matched for age on reading, visual rapid naming and phonological processing tasks. Our results suggest that there is a subgroup of dyslexic readers with intact phonological processing capacity (in terms of both accuracy and speed measures) but poor rapid naming skills. We also provide evidence for an independent association between rapid naming and reading competence in the dyslexic sample, when the effect of phonological skills was controlled. Altogether, the results are more consistent with the view that rapid naming problems in dyslexia represent a second core deficit rather than an exclusive phonological explanation for the rapid naming deficits. Furthermore, additional non-phonological processes, which subserve rapid naming performance, contribute independently to reading development.     

LEARNING TO READ IN ARABIC: READING,SYNTACTIC, ORTHOGRAPHIC AND WORKING MEMORY SKILLS IN NORMALLY ACHIEVING AND POOR ARABIC READERS

ABSTRACT

While many studies point to a positive relationship between phonological skills and reading in English, little is known about these relationships for children learning to read in Arabic. Arabic orthography is considered deep if it is not vowelized but shallow if it is vowelized. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among reading ability, phonological, semantic, orthographic and syntactic skills in Arabic. The participants were 143 Arab children, aged 8‐11, in Arab villages of central Israel. They were administered working memory, visual, oral close, phonological, word recognition, spelling, orthographic, and word attack tests. The results showed that word recognition test was highly correlated with phonological skills, semantic processing, syntactic knowledge and short‐term memory. Poor readers showed a significant lag in the development of these skills, the problems being most significant at phonological and semantic levels and less so at the visual levels. The similarities and differences between the acquisition of reading skills in Arabic and English are discussed.     

The contribution of orthography to spoken word production: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese

A recent debate in the language production literature concerns the influence of a word’s orthographic information on spoken word production and the extent to which this influence is modulated by task context. In the present study, Mandarin Chinese participants produced sets of words that shared orthography (O+P−), phonology (O−P+), or orthography and phonology (O+P+), or were unrelated (O−P−), in the context of a reading, associative naming, or picture naming task. Shared phonology yielded facilitation effects in all three tasks, but only in the reading task was this phonological effect modulated by shared orthography. Shared orthography by itself (O+P−) revealed inhibitory effects in reading, but not in associative naming or in picture naming. These results suggest that a word’s orthography information influences spoken word production only in tasks that rely heavily on orthographic information.     

Phonological and semantic information in adults' orthographic learning

A training paradigm was used to assess the early stages of the acquisition of novel letter strings in adults. Provision of either phonological or semantic information during training improved spelling recognition (Experiment 1). Manipulation of the processing required during training (phonological, semantic, or both) produced no consistent effects on spelling when both phonology and meaning were provided (Experiment 2). An advantage of phonological over orthographic processing on spelling recognition and cued recall was found when meaning was provided during training but phonology was not (Experiment 3). The experiments support the role of phonological information in early learning of orthography, but additional research is required to clarify when and how semantic information supports the formation of new orthographic representations.