Inferring Sublexical Correspondences from Sight Vocabulary: Evidence from 6- and 7-year-olds

We report an experiment designed to investigate 6-to-7-year-old children's ability to acquire knowledge of sublexical correspondences between print and sound from their reading experience. A computer database containing the printed word vocabulary of children taking part in the experiment was compiled and used to devise stimuli controlled for grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) frequency and rime neighbourhood consistency according to the children's reading experience. Knowledge of GPC rules and rime units was compared by asking children to read aloud three types of nonword varying in regularity of GPC and consistency of rime pronunciation. Results supported the view that children can acquire knowledge of both GPC rules and rime units from their reading experience. GPC rule strength affects the likelihood of a GPC response; rime consistency affects the likelihood of a rime response.     

Orthographically Influenced Abstract Phonological Representation: Evidence from Non-rhotic Speakers

It is typically assumed that when orthography is translated silently into phonology (i.e., when reading silently), the phonological representation is equivalent to the spoken form or, at least, the surface phonemic form. The research presented here demonstrates that the phonological representation is likely to be more abstract than this, and is orthographically influenced. For example, the claim is made that the word corn has an underlying /r/ in its phonological representation, even in non-rhotic dialects. The evidence comes from difficulties observed in judgements about the homophony with a target word of a pseudohomophone whose phonology does not match the putative abstract representation of that word. For example, it is hard to say that the pseudohomophone cawn is homophonic with corn. The conclusion that orthography can shape phonological representation is antithetical to both computational models of the conversion of print to sound and linguistic accounts of phonology.The research reported in this paper was supported by a grant awarded to the author by the Australian Research Council.     

Picture Naming Deficits in Developmental Dyslexia: The Phonological Representations Hypothesis

The picture and word naming performance of developmental dyslexics was compared to the picture and word naming performance of non-dyslexic (“garden variety”) poor readers, reading age, and chronological age-matched controls. The stimulus list used for both tasks was systematically manipulated for word length and word frequency. In order to examine picture naming errors in more depth, an object name recognition test assessed each subject's vocabulary knowledge of those names which they were unable to spontaneously label in the picture naming task. Findings indicated that the dyslexic and the garden variety poor readers exhibited a picture naming deficit relative to both chronological and reading age-matched controls. Findings also indicated that both groups of impaired readers obtained superior scores in the word naming task than in the picture naming task, while both groups of controls showed no difference in performance across tasks. The dyslexics' picture naming errors, but not those of the garden variety poor readers, were particularly marked on polysyllabic and/or low frequency words, indicating a possible phonological basis to the picture naming deficit of the dyslexic children. These children also recognized significantly more unnamed target words than all comparison groups, suggesting a particular difficulty inretrievingthe phonological codes of known picture names rather than a vocabulary deficit. Results are discussed in terms of dyslexics' difficulty in encoding full segmental phonological representations of names in long-term memory and/or in processing these representations in order to generate required names on demand.     

Phonological coding in word reading: Evidence from hearing and deaf readers

The ability of prelingually, profoundly deaf readers to access phonological information during reading was investigated in three experiments. The experiments employed a task, developed by Meyer, Schvaneveldt, and Ruddy (1974), in which lexical decision response times (RTs) to orthographically similar rhyming (e.g., WAVE-SAVE) and nortrhyming (e.g., HAVE-CAVE) word pairs were compared with RTs to orthographically and phonologically dissimilar control word pairs. The subjects of the study were deaf college students and hearing college students. In Experiments 1 and 2, in which the nonwords were pronounceable, the deaf subjects, like the hearing subjects, were facilitated in their RTs to rhyming pairs, but not to nonrhyming pairs. In Experiment 3, in which the nonwords were unpronounceable, both deaf and hearing subjects were facilitated in their RTs to both rhyming and nonrhyming pairs, with the facilitation being significantly greater for the rhyming pairs. These results indicate that access to phonological information is possible despite prelingual and profound hearing impairment. As such, they run counter to claims that deaf individuals are limited to the use of visual strategies in reading. Given the impoverished auditory, experience of such readers, these results suggest that the use of phonological information need not be tied to the auditory modality.     

The Time Course of Grammatical and Phonological Processing During Speaking: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

Motor-related brain potentials were used to examine the time course of grammatical and phonological processes during noun phrase production in Dutch. In the experiments, participants named colored pictures using a no-determiner noun phrase. On half of the trials a syntactic–phonological classification task had to be performed before naming. Depending on the outcome of the classifications, a left or a right push-button response was given (go trials), or no push-button response was given (no-go trials). Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether syntactic and phonological information affected the motor system at separate moments in time. The results showed that when syntactic information determined the response-hand decision, an LRP developed on no-go trials. However, no such effect was observed when phonological information determined response hand. On the basis of the data, it can be estimated that an additional period of at least 40 ms is needed to retrieve a word's initial phoneme once its lemma has been retrieved. These results provide evidence for the view that during speaking, grammatical processing precedes phonological processing in time.     

Representation of Object Orientation in Children: Evidence from Mirror-Image Confusions

Although many cognitive functions require information about the orientations of objects, little is known about representation or processing of object orientation. Mirror-image confusion provides a potential clue. This phenomenon is typically characterized as a tendency to confuse images related by left-right reflection (reflection across an extrinsic vertical axis). However, in most previous studies the stimuli were inadequate for identifying a specific mirror-image (or other) relationship as the cause of the observed confusions. Using stimuli constructed to resolve this problem, Gregory and McCloskey (2010) found that adults' errors were primarily reflections across an object axis, and not left-right reflections. The present study demonstrates that young children's orientation errors include both object-axis reflections and left-right reflections. We argue that children and adults represent object orientation in the same coordinate-system format (McCloskey, 2009), with orientation errors resulting from difficulty encoding or retaining one (adults) or two (children) specific components of the posited representations.     

Representation of letter position in spelling: Evidence from acquired dysgraphia

The graphemic representations that underlie spelling performance must encode not only the identities of the letters in a word, but also the positions of the letters. This study investigates how letter position information is represented. We present evidence from two dysgraphic individuals, CM and LSS, who perseverate letters when spelling: that is, letters from previous spelling responses intrude into subsequent responses. The perseverated letters appear more often than expected by chance in the same position in the previous and subsequent responses. We used these errors to address the question of how letter position is represented in spelling. In a series of analyses we determined how often the perseveration errors produced maintain position as defined by a number of alternative theories of letter position encoding proposed in the literature. The analyses provide strong evidence that the grapheme representations used in spelling encode letter position such that position is represented in a graded manner based on distance from both-edges of the word.     

Phonological and semantic priming: Evidence for task-independent effects

The questions asked in the present experiments concern the generality of semantic and phonological priming effects: Do these effects arise automatically regardless of target task, or are these effects restricted to target tasks that specifically require the retrieval of the primed information? In Experiment 1, subjects produced faster color matching times on targets preceded by a masked rhyming prime than on targets preceded by an orthographic control or an unrelated prime. This result suggests that automatic priming effects on the basis of phonological similarity can be obtained even when the target task does not make use of phonological information. This claim was reinforced in Experiment 2 in which a rhyme priming effect and a semantic priming effect were found in a semantic categorization task. In Experiment 3, the target task was phonological (rhyme detection), and, again, both phonological and semantic priming effects were observed. Finally, in Experiments 4 and 5, in a replication and an extension of Experiment 1, phonological and semantic priming effects were found in a color matching task, a task involving neither phonological nor semantic processing. These results are most straightforwardly interpreted by assuming that both semantic and phonological priming effects are, at least in part, due to automatic activation of memorial representations.     

词汇表征和加工理论及其认知神经心理学证据

认知神经心理学为探讨语言心理表征和加工理论提供了新途径 ,使得人们对心理词典结构的认识不断深入细化。研究表明词汇不同性质的信息在表征上相互独立 ,词典系统至少包括语义系统、语音输入词典与语音输出词典、字形输入词典与字形输出词典等模块。本文着重介绍了这一词典系统及其认知神经心理学证据     

Phonological Awareness Development as a Discrete Process: Evidence for an Integrative Model

The theoretical and practical implications of examining young children's acquisitions of phonological awareness skills with specific and differentiated processing tasks are explored in this study. The study presents data from 269 kindergarten children completing a phonological awareness protocol that provided information on 14 discrete phonological awareness skills. The data supported the assertion that phonological awareness develops in a gradual and continuous fashion and illustrated the importance of measuring phonological awareness while controlling for the effects of task difficulty, linguistic complexity, and phoneme position within syllables. In addition, three general patterns of literacy development were confirmed in these analyses that frame the integrated model of phonological awareness development.     

Dyslexia and reasoning: The importance of visual processes

Recent research has suggested that individuals with dyslexia rely on explicit visuospatial representations for syllogistic reasoning while most non‐dyslexics opt for an abstract verbal strategy. This paper investigates the role of visual processes in relational reasoning amongst dyslexic reasoners. Expt 1 presents written and verbal protocol evidence to suggest that reasoners with dyslexia generate detailed representations of relational properties and use these to make a visual comparison of objects. Non‐dyslexics use a linear array of objects to make a simple transitive inference. Expt 2 examined evidence for the visual‐impedance effect which suggests that visual information detracts from reasoning leading to longer latencies and reduced accuracy. While non‐dyslexics showed the impedance effects predicted, dyslexics showed only reduced accuracy on problems designed specifically to elicit imagery. Expt 3 presented problems with less semantically and visually rich content. The non‐dyslexic group again showed impedance effects, but dyslexics did not. Furthermore, in both studies, visual memory predicted reasoning accuracy for dyslexic participants, but not for non‐dyslexics, particularly on problems with highly visual content. The findings are discussed in terms of the importance of visual and semantic processes in reasoning for individuals with dyslexia, and we argue that these processes play a compensatory role, offsetting phonological and verbal memory deficits.     

Extracting Phonological Patterns for L2 Word Learning: The Effect of Poor Phonological Awareness

An implicit word learning paradigm was designed to test the hypothesis that children who came to the task of L2 vocabulary acquisition with poorer L1 phonological awareness (PA) are less capable of extracting phonological patterns from L2 and thus have difficulties capitalizing on this knowledge to support L2 vocabulary learning. A group of Chinese-speaking six-grade students took a multi-trial L2 (English) word learning task after being exposed to a set of familiar words that rhymed with the target words. Children’s PA was measured at grade 3. Children with relatively poorer L1 PA and those with better L1 PA did not differ in identifying the forms of the new words. However, children with poorer L1 PA demonstrated reduced performance in naming pictures with labels that rhymed with the pre-exposure words than with labels that did not rhyme with the pre-exposure words. Children with better L1 PA were not affected by the recurring rime shared by the pre-exposure words and the target words. These findings suggest that poor L1 PA may impede L2 word learning via difficulty in abstracting phonological patterns away from L2 input to scaffold word learning.     

Moving Beyond Phonological Awareness: The Role of Phonological Awareness Skills in Arabic Reading Development

In the current research we investigate the role of early phonological awareness skills on reading development in diglossic Arabic. Two-hundred and six Arabic speaking first graders, composed of 25 at-linguistic risk pupils (LR group) and 181 normally developing readers, representing the found heterogeneity in the classroom participated in this study. For this purpose, phonological training program was developed where we followed the pupils’ development in both phonological awareness skills and reading development in second grade. As indicated by the study results, higher achievements in phonological awareness measures was noted among HG group in first grade. After Training, significant improvement in phonological awareness was noted among both groups, where LR group was able to close the gaps in phonological awareness skills with HG group. When examining the relationship between phonological awareness and reading performance, moderate positive correlation was found within HG group whereas strong positive relationship was encountered with the LR group. Despite the progress in phonological awareness skills and its strong relationship with reading, LR group showed lower reading performance when compared to HG group. The study results are discussed in relation to its scientific and didactic implications on Arabic reading acquisition.     

Sublexical processing in visual recognition of Chinese characters: evidence from repetition blindness for subcharacter components

Repetition blindness (RB) refers to the failure to detect the second occurrence of a repeated item in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). In two experiments using RSVP, the ability to report two critical characters was found to be impaired when these two characters were identical (Experiment 1) or similar by sharing one repeated component (Experiment 2), as opposed to when they were different characters with no common components. RB for the whole character occurred when the exposure duration was more than 50 ms with one intervening character between the two critical characters (lag=1), whereas RB for subcharacter components was more evident at exposure durations shorter than 50 ms with no intervening character (lag=0). These results provide support for the model of sublexical processing in Chinese character recognition.     

Input Training Matters in L2 Syntactic Representation Entrenchment: Evidence from a Follow-Up ERP Study

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The usage-based theory highlights the important role of linguistic input in language acquisition, and assumes that syntactic representations could be...     

The Continuum of Deep/Surface Dyslexia

A right-handed male sustained traumatic brain injury which resulted in anomia, dyslexia, and agraphia. The most severe CT (computed tomography)-identified brain damage was located in the right parieto-temporal lobe. In the first months following the injury, the pattern of reading errors was similar to that associated with deep dyslexia. However, nonlexical derivation of phonology from print was not abolished. As the patient's ability to associate letter patterns with sounds improved, oral reading also improved. Although he no longer produced semantic errors in oral reading, he continued to produce oral reading errors that were visually and phonologically related to the targets. Four months after the injury, the error pattern observed in the patient's oral reading was consistent with very mild surface dyslexia. The significance of these observations to dual-deficit models of acquired dyslexia is discussed, as are their implications for rehabilitation.     

空间注意能够促进知觉表征进入工作记忆:来自注意瞬脱的证据

本研究目的一是探讨外周空间线索能否促进知觉表征进入工作记忆,二是观察线索的信息性对该促进作用时间进程的影响。实验采用注意瞬脱和空间线索结合的实验范式,考察不同信息性线索对目标识别的促进效应在注意瞬脱期间内外的变化。实验1和实验2分别采用了非信息性和信息性线索。结果显示：外周线索的促进效应在瞬脱期间内显著大于瞬脱期间外;非信息性线索和信息性线索分别在较短和较长的线索-目标间隔下起促进效应。因此,外周线索能促进知觉表征进入工作记忆,而不同信息性线索可能引发不同的注意机制．从而具有不同人促进效应。     

Phonological Short-term Memory and the Learning of Novel Words: The Effect of Phonological Similarity and Item Length

The investigation of a patient with a selective impairment of phonological short-term memory has recently provided evidence that this system may be involved in long-term learning of novel words, for which a pre-existing semantic representation is not available (Baddeley, Papagno, & Vallar, 1988). The present series of experiments in normal subjects explored this hypothesis. We assessed the effects of phonological similarity and item length, which reflect the operation of the phonological short-term store and the rehearsal component of verbal memory, upon paired associate long-term learning of auditorily presented words and non-words. Phonological similarity affected the learning of novel words more than known words (Experiment 1); when a delay was interposed between presentation and recall, the disruptive effect was confined to novel words (Experiment 2). Also word length disrupted the learning of novel words, but not of known words (Experiment 3). These results tie in with neuropsychological evidence to suggest a role for phonological short-term memory in the learning of new words, and they have developmental implications for the study of language acquisition.     

Lexical Representation and Processing of Morphologically Complex Words: Evidence from the Reading Performance of an Italian Agrammatic Patient

The study of patients with acquired language disorders has provided crucial evidence for contemporary theories on mental lexical representation. This is particularly true for the representation of morphologically complex words. In this paper we analyzed the performance of a patient (M.B.) affected by agrammatism and dyslexia. M.B. was required to read aloud simple and morphologically complex words. The patient's pattern of errors was interpreted as the result of a predominant use of the lexical routine (phonological dyslexia). Three reading tasks were developed which allowed us to test M.B.'s ability to read morphologically complex words (reading of regular and irregular plurals; reading of high- and low-frequency singular and plural nouns; reading of evaluative suffixes). Errors were determined by frequency effect rather than by type of suffix (i.e., inflectional or derivational). High-frequency morphologically complex items seemed to meet stored representations, thus avoiding the parsing procedures that are required for less frequent items. These results are in keeping with dual route models of lexical representation of morphologically complex words.     

语音加工理论的演变

从关于阅读的经典理论,到近些年的连接主义理论,语音在词汇加工中的作用问题一直受到研究者的重视。从历史上看,认知问题常常处于一种矛盾的境地,出现了“预加工(prepositional)对双编码”、“平行加工对系列加工”、“网络的对‘特征-组’语义记忆”的争论。这样的结局导致语音加工象钟摆一样从一个观点到另一个观点。而在最近15年,钟摆似乎停留在了语音加工的两个通路问题上。下面就涉及语音加工的通路问题的各种理论的演变作一系统地阐述。