Comparing the Effects of Unknown-Known Ratios on Word Reading Learning Versus Learning Rates

An extension of G. L. Cates et al. (2003) investigation was conducted to determine if students’ cumulative learning rates would be superior for words read under a traditional drill and practice condition (as they were for spelling in the previous study) than under interspersal conditions of varying ratios of unknown to known words. Participants consisted of three intermediate grade students who were delayed readers. They received a less challenging ratio of unknown to known word (High-P sequencing) interspersal procedure, a more challenging ratio of unknown to known word interspersal training procedure, and a traditional drill and practice procedure in an alternating fashion across several tutoring sessions. Cumulative words read with mastery and cumulative rates of words read with mastery were measured across sessions for each participant under each instructional condition. Findings were consistent with the Cates et al., study revealing that children learn more words per minute of instructional time under the traditional drill and practice condition. These results further support examining instructional efficiency as well as effectiveness when making decisions about selecting and implementing interventions.     

Transfert de la conscience morphologique de l’arabe langue première au français langue seconde au cours des trois premières années d’apprentissage

There is a great deal of evidence to support the role of morphological awareness in reading development. However, towards second language acquisition, transfer of morphological awareness from first to second language (L1 to L2) is still discussed. The underlying question concerns the extent to which morphological awareness is a specific or universal process, and its dependence of linguistic features. The aim of this study is to examine cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic L1 to French L2 (morphological awareness and word reading) at different level of learning French L2 (F_L2). 106 Tunisian children, whose first language is Arabic, in 1st (n = 29; mean age; 8; 10 years), 2nd (n = 33; mean age; 9; 9 years) or 3rd year (n = 44; mean age; 10; 10 years) of learning F_L2 participated to this study. Their morphological awareness (inflectional or derivational oddity detection tasks) and their performance in word reading (one minute test) were assessed in standard Arabic and French, as well as their vocabulary knowledge in French. A series of fixed-order hierarchical regression analysis was performed on derivational awareness performances, inflectional awareness performances and word reading performances in F_L2, controlling for effects of other important variables (e.g. French vocabulary, French morphological awareness with word reading scores as outcome variable and French inflectional or derivational awareness with French inflectional or derivational awareness scores as outcome variable respectively, Arabic word reading, etc.). Results show significant contributions of L1 morpho-derivational awareness on F_L2 morpho-derivational awareness in 2nd year (12%), and of L1 morphological awareness on reading words F_L2 in 3^rd year (5%). These results confirm the cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness, particularly derivational, from L1 to L2 among alphabetic — but orthographically and morphologically distances — languages. They also suggest that such a transfer could be relatively limited. It could appear during learning process after achieving a threshold in F_L2 and before specific L2 skills take place. Thus, beyond the morphological opacity of Arabic (nonlinear morphology) and linguistic distance between Arabic and French, the morphological transfer could appear on rich and important morphological dimension in L1 and suggest dealing with the nature of cross-linguistic abilities in depth.     

Representation of grammatical properties of Italian verbs in the mental lexicon

The present study focuses on the representation of verbs in the Italian mental lexicon and investigates some grammatical properties: inflectional class, mood, tense, and person. Two experiments based on free recall of single inflected forms are reported. The patterns of recall and error are taken as evidence for the grammatical and morphological information exploited in the access to the verb forms. The pattern of results provides support for the hypothesis that in the mental lexicon the information about conjugation and mood is an organizational criterion for the representation of verbal forms. An interaction between mood and conjugation, likely to arise from the difference in productivity between conjugations, is also observed.     

Genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in printed word recognition

The genetic and environmental etiologies of individual differences in printed word recognition and related skills were explored in 440 identical and fraternal twin pairs between 8 and 18 years of age. A theoretically driven measurement model identified five latent variables: IQ, phoneme awareness, word recognition, phonological decoding, and orthographic coding. Cholesky decomposition models on these five latent constructs revealed the existence of both common and independent genetic effects, as well as non-shared environmental influences. There was evidence for moderate genetic influences common between IQ, phoneme awareness, and word-reading skills, and for stronger IQ-independent genetic influences that were common between phoneme awareness and word-reading skills, particularly phonological decoding. Phonological and orthographic coding skills in word recognition had both significant common and significant independent genetic influences, with implications for "dual-route" and "connectionist" reading models, subtypes of reading disabilities, and the remediation of reading disabilities.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in visual word recognition: evidence from expert vocabularies

Three experiments assessed the contributions of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and frequency to visual word recognition. Three databases were created from electronic journals in chemistry, psychology and geology in order to identify technical words that are extremely frequent in each discipline but acquired late in life. In Experiment 1, psychologists and chemists showed an advantage in lexical decision for late-acquired/high-frequency words (e.g. a psychologist responding to cognition) over late-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. a chemist responding to cognition), revealing a frequency effect when words are perfectly matched. However, contrary to theories that exclude AoA as a factor, performance was similar for the late-acquired/high-frequency and early-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. dragon) even though their cumulative frequencies differed by more than an order of magnitude. This last finding was replicated with geologists using geology words matched with early-acquired words in terms of concreteness (Experiment 2). Most interestingly, Experiment 3 yielded the same pattern of results in naming while controlling for imageability, a finding that is particularly problematic for parallel distributed processing models of reading.     

Orthographic learning at a glance: on the time course and developmental onset of self-teaching

Experiment 1 examined the time course of orthographic learning among Grade 3 children. A single encounter with a novel orthographic string was sufficient to produce reliable recall of orthographic detail. Moreover, newly acquired orthographic information was retained 1 month later. These data support the logistic learning functions featured in contemporary connectionist models of reading rather than a "threshold" model of orthographic learning. Experiments 2 and 3 examined self-teaching among novice readers. In contrast to the findings from less regular orthographies such as English and Dutch, beginning readers of a highly regular orthography (Hebrew) appear to be relatively insensitive to word-specific orthographic detail, reading in a nonlexical "surface" fashion. These results suggest fundamental differences between shallow and deep orthographies in the development of orthographic sensitivity.     

Application of the dual-component model of working memory to ADHD:Greater secondary memory deficit despite confounded cognitive differences

The dual-component model postulates that working memory capacity consists of two dissociable components: maintenance in primary memory (PM) and retrieval from secondary memory (SM). Recent application of this model to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has revealed that the SM component is more deficient than the PM component across both verbal and spatial modalities. The present study attempts to strengthen this conclusion by addressing two weaknesses in the previous study. First, the present study shows that the SM component continues to be more deficient than the PM component across both modalities under conditions in which (1) all participants were instructed to use the same recall strategy (resulting in the exclusion of fewer participants); and, (2) individual differences in this strategy were controlled. Second, the present study also documents a group difference in word reading efficiency that is confounded with diagnostic status and that might have influenced estimates of PM and SM capacities in the verbal modality. However, although the SM component is more deficient than the PM component in the ADHD group, the magnitude of this interaction does not vary as a function task modality. These findings are interpreted to suggest that the pattern of WM deficiencies observed are part of a causal pathway that can lead to the symptoms of ADHD, as well as to impairments in reading (and intelligence) due to overlapping cue-dependent retrieval mechanisms. These findings provide additional support for the notion that the SM component of WM is an important and neglected target for treatment.     

Using Statistical Models of Morphology in the Search for Optimal Units of Representation in the Human Mental Lexicon

Determining optimal units of representing morphologically complex words in the mental lexicon is a central question in psycholinguistics. Here, we utilize advances in computational sciences to study human morphological processing using statistical models of morphology, particularly the unsupervised Morfessor model that works on the principle of optimization. The aim was to see what kind of model structure corresponds best to human word recognition costs for multimorphemic Finnish nouns: a model incorporating units resembling linguistically defined morphemes, a whole‐word model, or a model that seeks for an optimal balance between these two extremes. Our results showed that human word recognition was predicted best by a combination of two models: a model that decomposes words at some morpheme boundaries while keeping others unsegmented and a whole‐word model. The results support dual‐route models that assume that both decomposed and full‐form representations are utilized to optimally process complex words within the mental lexicon.     

Graph‐Theoretic Properties of Networks Based on Word Association Norms: Implications for Models of Lexical Semantic Memory

We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory (BEAGLE, Latent Semantic Analysis, and the Topic model) and of a simple associative model (POC) to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network properties. All three contextual models over‐predicted clustering in the norms, whereas the associative model under‐predicted clustering. Only a hybrid model that assumed that some of the responses were based on a contextual model and others on an associative network (POC) successfully predicted all of the network properties and predicted a word's top five associates as well as or better than the better of the two constituent models. The results suggest that participants switch between a contextual representation and an associative network when generating free associations. We discuss the role that each of these representations may play in lexical semantic memory. Concordant with recent multicomponent theories of semantic memory, the associative network may encode coordinate relations between concepts (e.g., the relation between pea and bean, or between sparrow and robin), and contextual representations may be used to process information about more abstract concepts.     

The use of probabilistic lexicality cues for word segmentation in Chinese reading

In an eye-tracking experiment we examined whether Chinese readers were sensitive to information concerning how often a Chinese character appears as a single-character word versus the first character in a two-character word, and whether readers use this information to segment words and adjust the amount of parafoveal processing of subsequent characters during reading. Participants read sentences containing a two-character target word with its first character more or less likely to be a single-character word. The boundary paradigm was used. The boundary appeared between the first character and the second character of the target word, and we manipulated whether readers saw an identity or a pseudocharacter preview of the second character of the target. Linear mixed-effects models revealed reduced preview benefit from the second character when the first character was more likely to be a single-character word. This suggests that Chinese readers use probabilistic combinatorial information about the likelihood of a Chinese character being single-character word or a two-character word online to modulate the extent of parafoveal processing.