The role of executive functions in bilingual children with reading difficulties

To explore the joint effect of reading difficulties (RD) and bilingualism on executive functions, 190 children of four groups of 9–12 year‐olds (41 bilinguals with RD, 45 monolinguals with RD, 45 bilinguals without RD, and 59 monolinguals without RD) were examined on the Concentration game, Tower of Hanoi, and Stroop as measures of executive functioning tapping into inhibitory/attentional control, working memory and planning ability. The most prominent finding was that in terms of RD, the speed of performances decreased dramatically. This general decrease was more pronounced for bilingual children with RD than for their monolingual counterparts. In conclusion, the findings suggest that while bilinguals gain more from executive functions in normal reading, they lose in terms of RD. Such an outcome confirms that executive functions are essential components of both reading and bilingualism, which depending on whether reading conditions are normal or difficult will produce cognitive advantages or disadvantages. Further, it is argued that dissimilarity between the Farsi and Swedish languages may complicate handling of such a situation.     

A model of saccadic landing positions in reading under the influence of sensory noise

During reading, saccadic eye movements are produced to move the high acuity foveal region of the eye to words of interest for efficient word processing. Distributions of saccadic landing positions peak close to a word's centre but are relatively broad compared to simple oculomotor tasks. Moreover, landing-position distributions are modulated both by distance of the launch site and by saccade type (e.g., one-step saccade, word skipping, refixation). Here we present a mathematical model for the computation of a saccade intended for a given target word. Two fundamental assumptions are related to (1) the sensory computation of the word centre from inter-word spaces and (2) the integration of sensory information and a priori knowledge using Bayesian estimation. Our model was developed for data from a large corpus of eye movements from normal reading. We demonstrate that the model is able simultaneously to account for a systematic shift of saccadic mean landing position with increasing launch-site distance and for qualitative differences between one-step saccades (i.e., from a given word to the next word) and word-skipping saccades.     

儿童理解监控的即时加工过程

理解监控在口语和阅读信息的交流中起关键作用。即时加工研究为揭示儿童理解监控发展特点及内在机制提供了新途径。本文结合已有口语理解监控和阅读理解监控成果,对儿童理解监控的特点及其可能的影响因素进行了全面综述。未来研究应在儿童理解监控的时间进程、口语理解监控及理论模型等方面进一步深化,积极开展脑机制研究,并从视听跨通道整合角度探索儿童理解监控过程的发展。     

5～7岁自闭症谱系障碍儿童环境文字阅读的特点

以带有不同类型情境线索(包括颜色、图标和字体)的环境文字为材料,采用命名任务考察5～7岁28名自闭症谱系障碍儿童和30名正常儿童阅读环境文字的特点。结果发现:(1)在去掉环境文字中的图标后,自闭症谱系障碍儿童和正常儿童命名文字的得分都显著降低;(2)在消除环境文字的字体线索后,自闭症谱系障碍儿童命名文字的得分显著降低,但正常儿童却较少受影响;(3)在阅读环境文字时,无论是自闭症谱系障碍儿童还是正常儿童,识字量越多,儿童越少依赖图标线索的提示。这些结果表明,自闭症谱系障碍儿童在阅读环境文字时,受图标线索和字体线索的影响较大,为制定促进其阅读学习的早期识字干预方案提供参考。