Young Children's Phonological Sensitivity After Exposure to a Rhyming or Nonrhyming Story

This study examined the ability of preschool children to make phonological discriminations after hearing rhyming or nonrhyming versions of the same story. Participants first listened to either a rhyming or nonrhyming version of a story, Rainy Day Kate (Blegvad, 1987), then attempted a phonological deletion and a rhyme/alliteration detection task. In accordance with prior theoretical notions that listening to rhyme sensitizes young children to phonological properties of words, children who heard the rhyming version of the story showed significantly higher performance on the rhyme/alliteration task than did participants who heard the nonrhyming narrative. Children in the rhyme condition also offered more rhyming and clang (nonword but phonologically similar) associates in completing the phonological deletion task.     

Three kinds of rhymes: An ERP study

In a simple prime-target visual rhyming paradigm, pairs of words, nonwords, and single letters elicited similar event-related potential (ERP) rhyming effects in young adults. Within each condition, primes elicited contingent negative variation (CNV) while nonrhyming targets elicited more negative waveforms than rhyming targets within the 320-500ms (N400/N450) time window. The target rhyming effect, apparently primarily an index of phonological processing, was similar across conditions but tended to be smaller in mean amplitude for letters. One of the first reports of such a letter rhyming effect in the ERP literature, these findings could be important developmentally because letter rhyme tasks simultaneously index the two best predictors of ease of learning to read: letter name knowledge and phonological awareness.     

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。     

中文阅读中的语音类似效果

两个实验中的音韵和同声母没有启动效果这个事实,表明中文词视觉认知是经过正字法路线直接通达语义的。然而实验二同音词的启动效果可得出与以上相反的结论,即语音在中文阅读中有一定作用。两种不同的结果表明,语音在中文阅读中是否有作用,对书写词本身包含的语音类似信息具有依赖性。可能的结论是,在词汇通达中语音激活是自动的,但在中文似乎要比拼音文字弱;中文阅读也许更具有直通语义的特点。此研究支持双通道理论。     

《彖传》韵考

本文据《彖传》解释古经六十四卦卦名、卦辞、卦义的特点,认定《彖传》为六十四章,逐章考证了 其押韵韵部,共得出二百五十三个韵脚字,即二百五十三个韵句,又据换韵与语义特征,考证了《彖传》的 语义段。二百五十三个韵脚字分布于古韵十八部中,这为一系列的重要研究提供了基础。     

Is there an alternative cerebral network associated with enhanced phonological processing in deaf speech-users? An exceptional case

Most people born deaf and exposed to oral language show scant evidence of sensitivity to the phonology of speech when processing written language. In this respect they differ from hearing people. However, occasionally, a prelingually deaf person can achieve good processing of written language in terms of phonological sensitivity and awareness, and in this respect appears exceptional. We report the pattern of event-related fMRI activation in such a deaf reader while performing a rhyme-judgment on written words with similar spelling endings that do not provide rhyme clues. The left inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis and the left inferior parietal lobe showed greater activation for this task than for a letter-string identity matching task. This participant was special in this regard, showing significantly greater activation in these regions than a group of hearing participants with a similar level of phonological and reading skill. In addition, SR showed activation in the left mid-fusiform gyrus; a region which did not show task-specific activation in the other respondents. The pattern of activation in this exceptional deaf reader was also unique compared with three deaf readers who showed limited phonological processing. We discuss the possibility that this pattern of activation may be critical in relation to phonological decoding of the written word in good deaf readers whose phonological reading skills are indistinguishable from those of hearing readers.     

An unusual presentation of probable dementia: Rhyming,associations, and verbal disinhibition

We report a case of probable Alzheimer's disease who presented with the unusual feature of disinhibited rhyming. Core language skills were largely intact but generative language was characterized by semantic‐based associations, evident in tangential and associative content, and phonology‐based associations, evident in rhyming, in the context of prominent executive dysfunction. We suggest this pattern is underpinned by a failure to terminate or inhibit verbal associations resulting in a ‘loosening’ of associations at the level of conceptual preparation for spoken language.