Rapid acquisition of phonological alternations by infants

We explore whether infants can learn novel phonological alternations on the basis of distributional information. In Experiment 1, two groups of 12-month-old infants were familiarized with artificial languages whose distributional properties exhibited either stop or fricative voicing alternations. At test, infants in the two exposure groups had different preferences for novel sequences involving voiced and voiceless stops and fricatives, suggesting that each group had internalized a different familiarization alternation. In Experiment 2, 8.5-month-olds exhibited the same patterns of preference. In Experiments 3 and 4, we investigated whether infants' preferences were driven solely by preferences for sequences of high transitional probability. Although 8.5-month-olds in Experiment 3 were sensitive to the relative probabilities of sequences in the familiarization stimuli, only 12-month-olds in Experiment 4 showed evidence of having grouped alternating segments into a single functional category. Taken together, these results suggest a developmental trajectory for the acquisition of phonological alternations using distributional cues in the input.     

听觉呈现条件下汉语双字词语义和语音启动的ERP研究

在词汇决定实验中研究语义启动和语音启动,材料为通过听觉呈现的汉语双字词组成的词对(间隔600ms),记录行为数据和ERP数据,结果发现：(1)启动词与目标词之间的语义联系可显著改善对目标词的加工,表现为错误率降低、反应时缩短,以及N400波幅降低;(2)启动词与目标词之间的语音一致对目标词的加工既有干扰作用,又有促进作用。表现为错误率提高,但反应时趋向缩短,N400波幅亦呈下降趋势;(3)启动词与目标词首音相同比尾音相同有更大的干扰作用。     

Prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness in children’s reading

This study examined the relationships among prosodic sensitivity, morphological awareness, and reading ability in a sample of 104 8- to 13-year-olds. Using a task adapted from Carlisle (Applied Psycholinguistics, 9 (1988) 247-266), we measured children’s ability to produce morphological derivations with differing levels of phonological complexity between stem and derivation: No Change, Phonemic Change, Stress Change, and Both Phonemic and Stress Change. A 3 (Grade) × 4 (Derivation Type) analysis of variance showed that children perform significantly more poorly on both types of derivations that involve stress changes than on phonemic change and no change derivations. Regression analyses showed that both prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness, especially in derivations that require manipulation of stress, are significant predictors of reading ability after controlling for age, verbal and nonverbal abilities, and phonological awareness.     

The pars triangularis in dyslexia and ADHD: A comprehensive approach

Limited research has been conducted on the structure of the pars triangularis (PT) in dyslexia despite functional neuroimaging research finding it may play a role in phonological processing. Furthermore, research to date has not examined PT size in ADHD even though the right inferior frontal region has been implicated in the disorder. Hence, one of the purposes of this study was to examine the structure of the PT in dyslexia and ADHD. The other purposes included examining the PT in relation to overall expressive language ability and in relation to several specific linguistic functions given language functioning often is affected in both dyslexia and ADHD. Participants included 50 children: 10 with dyslexia, 15 with comorbid dyslexia/ADHD, 15 with ADHD, and 10 controls. Using a 2 (dyslexia or not) × 2 (ADHD or not) MANCOVA, findings revealed PT length and shape were comparable between those with and without dyslexia. However, children with ADHD had smaller right PT lengths than those without ADHD, and right anterior ascending ramus length was related to attention problems in the total sample. In terms of linguistic functioning, presence of an extra sulcus in the left PT was related to poor expressive language ability. In those with adequate expressive language functioning, left PT length was related to phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory and rapid automatic naming (RAN). Right PT length was related to RAN and semantic processing. Further work on PT morphology in relation to ADHD and linguistic functioning is warranted.     

中文音韵在词汇通达中的作用

两个实验表明音韵在词汇通达中存在一定的效果,可见在语音心理词典中语音类似的连接,除了以往研究存在字的较强的同音层以外,还存在较弱的音韵层。在词汇通达中音韵信息的自动激活、中文似乎要比拼音文字弱,其研究似乎支持双通道理论。     

A case study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual dyslexia

We report the case of AS, a 16 year-old English/Japanese bilingual boy, whose reading/writing difficulties are confined to English only. AS was born in Japan to a highly literate Australian father and English mother, and goes to a Japanese selective senior high school in Japan. His spoken language at home is English. AS's reading in logographic Japanese Kanji and syllabic Kana is equivalent to that of Japanese undergraduates or graduates. In contrast, his performance in various reading and writing tests in English as well as tasks involving phonological processing was very poor, even when compared to his Japanese contemporaries. Yet he has no problem with letter names or letter sounds, and his phoneme categorisation is well within the normal range of English native speakers. In order to account for our data that show a clear dissociation between AS's ability to read English and Japanese, we put forward the ‘hypothesis of granularity and transparency'. It is postulated that any language where orthography-to-phonology mapping is transparent, or even opaque, or any language whose orthographic unit representing sound is coarse (i.e. at a whole character or word level) should not produce a high incidence of developmental phonological dyslexia.     

Contrasting effects of phonological priming in aphasic word production

Two fluent aphasics, IG and GL, performed a phonological priming task in which they repeated an auditory prime then named a target picture. The two patients both had selective deficits in word production: they were at or near ceiling on lexical comprehension tasks, but were significantly impaired in picture naming. IG's naming errors included both semantic and phonemic paraphasias, as well as failures to respond, whereas GL's errors were mainly phonemic and formal paraphasias. The two patients responded very differently to phonological priming: IG's naming was facilitated (both accuracy and speed) only by begin-related primes (e.g. ferry-feather), whereas GL benefited significantly only from end-related primes (e.g. brother-feather), showing no more than a facilitatory trend with begin-related primes. We interpret these results within a two-stage model of word production, in which begin-related and end-related primes are said to operate at different stages. We then discuss implications for models of normal and aphasic word production in general and particularly with respect to sequential aspects of the phonological encoding process.     

Grammatical sensitivity: its origins and potential contribution to early word reading skill

A three-phase longitudinal study examined the origins of grammatical sensitivity and its usefulness as a predictor of early word-level reading. At about 4 years of age, children were given a range of language and cognitive tests. One year later, the children were given a further series of language and cognitive tests, this time including grammatical sensitivity, phonological sensitivity, and nonword repetition. Another year later, word-level reading achievement was assessed. Overall, grammatical sensitivity and phonological sensitivity were more firmly grounded in earlier language ability than in cognitive ability. Phonological sensitivity and nonword repetition showed reliable predictive associations with subsequent word reading skills. Grammatical sensitivity did not.     

Syllable splitting in literate and preliterate Hebrew speakers: onsets and rimes or bodies and codas?

This study examined consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllable splitting among literate (Grade 2) and preliterate (kindergarten) Hebrew speakers. Consideration of both the architecture of Hebrew orthography and phonology led to the prediction that a body-coda rather than an onset-rime subdivision would predominate. Structured and unstructured tasks confirmed the claim that there exists a subsyllabic, supraphonemic level of phonological awareness that is more accessible than individual phonemes. However, as predicted, the syllable body rather than the rime was found to be the more accessible biphonemic unit. Moreover, this preference did not appear to be solely the product of orthographic structure; rather it was also inherent in spoken phonology. Access to single phonemes, in contrast, shifted from an early preliteracy advantage for (monophonemic) onsets to a literacy-based preference for codas.