Reading, equivalence, and recombination of units: a replication with students with different learning histories

First graders, preschoolers, special education students, and adults received a reading program in which they learned to match printed to dictated words and to construct (copy) printed words. The students not only learned to match the training words but also learned to read them. In addition, most of the students learned to read new words that involved recombinations of the syllables of the training words. The results replicate and extend the generality of a prior analysis of a reading program based on stimulus equivalence and recombination of units.     

汉字字形输出过程中儿童的汉字结构意识

本研究通过控制汉字声旁与形旁的结构特征,采用听写纸笔测验考察了小学四年级儿童在汉字字形输出过程中的汉字结构意识.结果发现汉字声旁的规则性与形旁语义透明度都直接影响听写的正确率与错误率;在这种任务条件下,声旁的规则性与形旁语义透明度相互作用;阅读水平低的儿童比阅读水平高的儿童产生更多的同音替代错误.文章从听写条件下汉字的加工与儿童词汇表征的角度探讨了这些结果的理论含义.     

Local vs. global covert visual attention: Are two states necessary? Comment on Liechty et al., 2003

Liechty, Pieters, and Wedel (2003) report an eye-tracking experiment that is taken to support the distinction between two states of covert visual attention: local versus global. We discuss several logical problems with this dichotomy and their experiment, and then provide an alternate account of their data using a model, E-Z Reader, that requires only a single attention state.We thank Keith Rayner and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Pervasive influence of semantics in letter and category fluency: a multidimensional approach

We used multidimensional statistical procedures to study semantic and lexical processes underlying word retrieval in verbal-fluency performance. Forty healthy participants were given a two-choice letter task (i.e., generate items beginning with the letter 'A' or 'F', in any order) and a two-choice category task (i.e., generate animal or fruit names, in any order). Using correspondence analysis (CoA) and hierarchical clustering (HC), we found evidence of prominent semantic organization in both letter and category fluency. For example, a striking categorical segregation between animate and inanimate entities emerged during the letter task. Analysis of inter-item times revealed strong sequential priming effects in both tasks. Taken together, these results indicate that semantic facilitation is pervasive in word retrieval processes, even in the letter-fluency task, and therefore suggest that the traditional view of letter fluency as a purely phonemically based task should be revised. Finally, our findings may help explain patterns of verbal-fluency measures obtained in focal brain lesion patients.     

The relationship between auditory temporal processing,phonemic awareness,and reading disability

Recent research suggests an auditory temporal deficit as a possible contributing factor to poor phonemic awareness skills. This study investigated the relationship between auditory temporal processing of nonspeech sounds and phonological awareness ability in children with a reading disability, aged 8-12 years, using Tallal's tone-order judgement task. Normal performance on the tone-order task was established for 36 normal readers. Forty-two children with developmental reading disability were then subdivided by their performance on the tone-order task. Average and poor tone-order subgroups were then compared on their ability to process speech sounds and visual symbols, and on phonological awareness and reading. The presence of a tone-order deficit did not relate to performance on the order processing of speech sounds, to poorer phonological awareness or to more severe reading difficulties. In particular, there was no evidence of a group by interstimulus interval interaction, as previously described in the literature, and thus little support for a general auditory temporal processing difficulty as an underlying problem in poor readers. In this study, deficient order judgement on a nonverbal auditory temporal order task (tone task) did not underlie phonological awareness or reading difficulties.     

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.     

Evidence for a late-occurring effect of phoneme repetition during silent reading

Two reading experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of phoneme repetition during silent reading (also referred to as the visual tongue-twister effect, see McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982; Perfetti & McCutchen, 1982) in conjunction with end-of-clause and end-of-sentence wrap-up effects (Just & Carpenter, 1982; Rayner, Sereno, Morris, Schmauder, & Clifton, 1989). In both experiments, reading time was measured on sentences containing either six or zero words sharing the same initial phoneme. Sentences were presented in a phrase-by-phrase moving window, with each phrase either containing one word that involved a repeated phoneme or a matched word not involving a repeated phoneme. The sixth presentation region either contained or did not contain a comma (Experiment 1) or a period (Experiment 2). The results showed that the effect of phoneme repetition occurred relatively late during sentence processing, only after integration processing related to end-of-clause and end-of-sentence wrap-up occurred.