Letter detection: A window to unitization and other cognitive processes in reading text

Experiments are reviewed that use the letter-detection task, in which subjects read text and circle target letters. Evidence is provided that the letter-detection task reveals the processing units used in reading text and is influenced as well by visual, phonetic, and a combination of semantic and syntactic factors. Specifically, it is shown that circling a target letter in a word depends on the familiarity of the word’s visual configuration, the location of the word in the reader’s visual field, the phonetic representation of the letter in the word, and a combination of the word’s meaning and its grammatical function.     

Accessibility of the voicing distinction for learning phonological rules

In three experiments a series of nonsense syllables ending in consonants was presented to adult subjects who had to discover or learn a rule classifying the syllables into two groups. The rule was based either on the voicing of the final consonants or on an arbitrary division of them. Subjects performed better with the voicing than with the arbitrary rule only when there was a straightforward relationship between the voicing rule and the plural formation rule in English or, more generally, when voicing assimilation with an added consonant was involved and attention was focused on the sound and articulation of the syllables. We conclude that the voicing distinction is not ordinarily accessible and that individuals easily learn and use phonological rules involving voicing assimilation because of articulatory constraints on the production of consonant clusters.     

Derivatives of the Self-Directed Search: Potential clinical and evaluative uses

Four derivatives of the Self-Directed Search (SDS), accuracy in estimating one's profile, differentiation of one's six SDS personality types, consistency of the types within one's summary code, and congruence of the summary code with the preferred occupational area, were computed and correlated with other indices of career maturity for 138 community college students. Accuracy in estimating one's SDS profile correlated significantly with five other career maturity indices, but the other derivatives tended not to relate to the other career maturity criteria. The discussion examines the implications of using the Accuracy derivative to identify clients in need of assistance with career development and to unobtrusively evaluate career development interventions, and it suggests ways of increasing the reliability of the derivatives and promising directions for further research.     

Syllable-internal structure and the sonority hierarchy: Differential evidence from lexical decision,naming, and reading

Treiman (1983) and others have argued that spoken syllables are best characterized not as linear strings of phonemes, but as hierarchically organized units consisting of an onset (initial consonant or consonant cluster) and a rime (the vowel and any following consonants) and that the rime is further divided into a peak or nucleus (the vowel) and a coda (the final consonants). It has also been argued that the sonority (or vowel-likeness) of the consonant closest to the peak, which is a function of its phonetic class, may have an effect on the strength of boundaries determined by the hierarchical division of the syllable (e.g., Treiman, 1984). We examined the evidence for syllable-internal structure and for sonority in two experiments that employed visually presented stimuli and lexical decision, naming, and reading tasks. Our results provide support for the breakdown of the rime into a peak and a coda and for an effect of the sonority of the postvocalic consonant on that break. This pattern occurred only in our lexical decision tasks, so the effect is assumed to be postlexical. We did not find an effect of the onset-rime boundary, perhaps because of an unanticipated effect of word frequency. Our results are discussed in terms of phonological coding in short-term memory.     

A study of hyperlexia

Twelve children with early intense reading and superior word recognition skills coupled with disordered language and cognitive behavior are described. Cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures evidenced a generalized cognitive deficit in forming superordinate schemata which was not specific to visual or auditory modalities. Positive family histories for reading problems were present for 11 of the 12 children, suggesting a relationship between hyperlexia and dyslexia.     

Detection errors on the word the: evidence for reading units larger than letters.

In four experiments, subjects read 100-word passages and circled instances of the letter t. Subjects missed a disproportionate number of ts in the word the. Evidence was provided against explanations of this effect involving the location and pronunciation of the t in the and against an explanation in terms of the redundancy of the. Rather the high frequency of the appeared to be critical, and it was suggested that high-frequency words are read in terms of units larger than the letter.