Additivity of semantic and phonological effects: Evidence from speech production in Mandarin

A number of previous studies using picture–word interference (PWI) tasks conducted with speakers of Western languages have demonstrated non-additive effects of semantic and form overlap between pictures and words, which may indicate underlying non-discrete processing stages in lexical retrieval. The present study used Mandarin speakers and presented Chinese characters as distractors. In two experiments, we crossed semantic relatedness with “pure” phonological (i.e., orthographically unrelated) relatedness and found statistically additive effects. In a third experiment, semantic relatedness was crossed with orthographic overlap (phonological overlap was avoided), and once again we found an additive pattern. The results are discussed with regard to possible cross-linguistic differences between Western and non-Western languages in terms of phonological encoding, as well as concerning the locus of relatedness effects in PWI tasks.     

The effects of phonological similarity on the semantic categorisation of pictorial and lexical stimuli: evidence from continuous behavioural measures

Behavioural and neuroimaging studies provide evidence of automatic activation of phonology (e.g., covert speech) during the recognition of lexical stimuli. Implicit processing of phonological information was investigated in a kinematic study of semantic categorisation of pictures (session A) or words (session B). Participants clicked one of two items (target and distractor) based on their semantic congruency (artefact or natural) with a cued-word. Phonological similarity between cued-word and distractor was varied. The presence of the phonological distractor produced trajectories with greater curvature towards the competing semantic category than did the presence of a distractor not phonologically related. This suggests that the semantic categorisation of pictorial and lexical stimuli is influenced by the automatic activation of phonological information. Trajectories’ curvature reveals competition between partially activated phonological and semantic representations suggesting that phonological codes involved in linguistic processing influence the dynamic competition underlying the semantic categorisation of lexical and pictorial.     

汉语儿童的语音意识特点及阅读能力高低读者的差异

选取小学３,４,５年级儿童各２０名作为被试,系统探讨了儿童汉语普通话的音节意识、首音韵脚意识和音位意识的特点及发展,根据老师的评价把被试分为好的读者和差的读者。研究结果表明,语音意识测验成绩随年级的增长而提高;音节意识与首音一韵脚意识先于音位意识而发展;好、差读者在语音意识测验成绩上差异显著,而且,年级差异与好、差读者差异的程度和趋势是一致的,好、差读者在语音意识发展的速度上是不同的。     

Do dyslexia and stuttering share a processing deficit?

This study assessed the prevalence of childhood stuttering in adults with dyslexia (AWD) and the prevalence of dyslexia in adults who stutter (AWS). In addition, the linguistic profiles of 50 AWD, 30 AWS and 84 neurotypical adults were measured. We found that 17 out of 50 AWD (34 %) reported stuttering during childhood compared to 1 % of the neurotypical population. This was moderated by the severity of dyslexia: People with mild dyslexia showed a lower prevalence rate (15 %) of childhood stuttering than those with severe dyslexia (47 %). In addition, we observed that 50 % of the AWS (n = 30) fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of dyslexia, even though they had never been diagnosed as dyslexic. Compared to neurotypical adults, phonological working memory, awareness, and retrieval were similarly reduced in AWS and AWD. The findings supports the view that stuttering and dyslexia may share a phonological deficit.     

Development of Phonological Awareness in Bilingual Chinese Children

This study investigated the phonological awareness of 219 first, second, and fourth grade Cantonese-speaking children from the south of China, who received immersion Mandarin instruction beginning in the first grade. Children received onset, rime and tone awareness tasks in Cantonese and Mandarin. Children performed better on the Cantonese onset awareness task in grade one, but the difference disappeared in higher grades. However, their performance on the rime and tone awareness tasks was better in Mandarin. These results reflect the phonological structure of the two languages: Mandarin has a more complex onset system, whereas Cantonese has more complex tone and rime systems. Moreover, children’s phonological awareness increased faster in Mandarin, which likely resulted from Mandarin instruction. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that onset-rime awareness is a universal construct, whereas tone awareness is a language-specific construct.     

Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds?

Typical U.S. children use their knowledge of letters' names to help learn the letters' sounds. They perform better on letter sound tests with letters that have their sounds at the beginnings of their names, such as v, than with letters that have their sounds at the ends of their names, such as m, and letters that do not have their sounds in their names, such as h. We found this same pattern among children with speech sound disorders, children with language impairments as well as speech sound disorders, and children who later developed serious reading problems. Even children who scored at chance on rhyming and sound matching tasks performed better on the letter sound task with letters such as v than with letters such as m and h. Our results suggest that a wide range of children use the names of letters to help learn the sounds and that phonological awareness, as conventionally measured, is not required in order to do so.     

Lexical learning in bilingual adults: the relative importance of short-term memory for serial order and phonological knowledge

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses simultaneously in participants with variable levels of English-French bilingual proficiency. A word-nonword paired-associate learning task was administered, with nonwords obeying French phonotactic patterns. French phonological knowledge was estimated by a composite French proficiency score summarizing productive and receptive French vocabulary knowledge as well as quantitative and qualitative measures of French exposure. STM measures maximized retention of order information (serial order reconstruction) or retention of phonological item information (single nonword delayed repetition). The French proficiency score and the serial order STM measure independently predicted performance on the paired-associate learning task. These results highlight the conjoined role of phonological knowledge and serial order STM in lexical learning. Importantly, serial order STM remains a strong predictor of lexical learning, even for bilingual individuals who have broad phonological knowledge.     

Is a "Phoenician" reading style superior to a "Chinese" reading style? Evidence from fourth graders

This study compared normally achieving fourth-grade "Phoenician" readers, who identify nonwords significantly more accurately than they do exception words, with "Chinese" readers, who show the reverse pattern. Phoenician readers scored lower than Chinese readers on word identification, exception word reading, orthographic choice, spelling, reading comprehension, and verbal ability. When compared with normally achieving children who read nonwords and exception words equally well, Chinese readers scored as well as these children on word identification, regular word reading, orthographic choice, spelling, reading comprehension, phonological sensitivity, and verbal ability and scored better on exception word reading. Chinese readers also used rhyme-based analogies to read nonwords derived from high-frequency exception words just as often as did these children. As predicted, Phoenician and Chinese readers adopted somewhat different strategies in reading ambiguous nonwords constructed by analogy to high-frequency exception words. Phoenician readers were more likely than Chinese readers to read ambiguous monosyllabic nonwords via context-free grapheme-phoneme correspondences and were less likely to read disyllabic nonwords by analogy to high-frequency analogues. Although the Chinese reading style was more common than the Phoenician style in normally achieving fourth graders, there were similar numbers of poor readers with phonological dyslexia (identifying nonwords significantly more accurately than exception words) and surface dyslexia (showing the reverse pattern), although surface dyslexia was more common in the severely disabled readers. However, few of the poor readers showed pure patterns of phonological or surface dyslexia.     

How young children judge whether a word is one they know: a dual criterion account

Word familiarity judgment may be important for word learning, yet little is known about how children make this judgment. We hypothesized that preschool-age children differ in the judgment criteria that they use and that this difference derives from individual differences in basic memory processes. Those who have superior phonological working memory, but who retrieve less semantic information than their peers, base the judgment on whether they recognize a word’s sound form. Those who show the opposite memory profile base the judgment on whether they retrieve a word’s meaning. The results of two studies of 3- and 4-year-olds were consistent with these claims. Among those performing poorly on one memory measure, judgment accuracy was directly related to performance on the other memory measure. These memory-judgment relations were also found to be highly specific. This is the first investigation to demonstrate the usefulness of an individual differences approach for identifying relations between linguistic judgment processes and basic memory processes during early childhood.     

汉字习得的年龄效应:语音完整性假设的检验

采用语音匹配任务,考察汉字习得的年龄效应及其语音完整性假设的合理性。实验1首先采用整体语音匹配任务,证明了语音匹配实验范式的有效性。实验2和实验3分别采用声母匹配和韵母匹配任务,即事先呈现汉字的声母或者韵母,之后呈现汉字,要求被试判断呈现汉字的声母或者韵母是否与事先呈现的语音片段相同。结果发现,部分语音提取的任务中存在汉字习得的年龄效应,表现为早习得的汉字,无论声母和韵母的提取都比晚习得汉字声母和韵母的提取容易。研究结果不支持语音完整性假设,任意映射假设能够解释本研究的结果。