Phonological recoding in error detection: a cross-sectional study in beginning readers of Dutch

The present cross-sectional study investigated the development of phonological recoding in beginning readers of Dutch, using a proofreading task with pseudohomophones and control misspellings. In Experiment 1, children in grades 1 to 3 rejected fewer pseudohomophones (e. g., wein, sounding like wijn 'wine') as spelling errors than control misspellings (e. g., wijg). The size of this pseudohomophone effect was larger in grade 1 than in grade 2 and did not differ between grades 2 and 3. In Experiment 2, we replicated the pseudohomophone effect in beginning readers and we tested how orthographic knowledge may modulate this effect. Children in grades 2 to 4 again detected fewer pseudohomophones than control misspellings and this effect decreased between grades 2 and 3 and between grades 3 and 4. The magnitude of the pseudohomophone effect was modulated by the development of orthographic knowledge: its magnitude decreased much more between grades 2 and 3 for more advanced spellers, than for less advanced spellers. The persistence of the pseudohomophone effect across all grades illustrates the importance of phonological recoding in Dutch readers. At the same time, the decreasing pseudohomophone effect across grades indicates the increasing influence of orthographic knowledge as reading develops

The Relationship between Visuospatial Attention and the effect it has on Parsing Stimuli

This item is only available electronically.It is widely known that visuospatial attention is critical for reading, especially for the phonological decoding of unfamiliar letter strings (Montani, et al., 2014). The current study aims to narrow the knowledge gap that currently exists between the disruption of visuospatial attention and parsing – more specifically; how the distribution of phonology affects the parsing of letters by exploring syllable number and vowel length effects. When conducting this experiment, 38 participants were assigned to one of four conditions to analyse 240 non-ambiguous and 20 ambiguous stimuli. Participants had to decipher whether the stimuli had two or three syllables. All stimuli were split into two equally counterbalanced groups and presented in either a static or a jiggling format – to replicate disrupted visuospatial attention. The results show that the jiggling effect displayed no significant difference in RTs or error rates with either of the ambiguous or non-ambiguous stimuli. Results for the syllable length effect showed that non-ambiguous two syllable stimuli had faster RTs and accuracy and that ambiguous stimuli recorded significantly faster three syllable RTs in comparison to two syllables – giving evidence against syllable length effects. We also found that participants do have a significant preference for long vowels over short vowels for two syllable stimuli and short vowels over long vowels for three syllable stimuli. Overall, the initial hypotheses about visuospatial attention are uninformative. Limitations such as the lack of effectiveness from the jiggling effect and negative effect of the button-pressing should be considered in future studies.Thesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 202

Predictors of exception word and nonword reading in dyslexic children: the severity hypothesis

The classification of dyslexic children into discrete subtypes yields a poor description of the dyslexic population at large. Multiple regression methods were used to examine continuous variation in component reading subskills (nonword and exception word reading) and their underlying cognitive skills within a group of 59 9-15 year-old dyslexic children. Two measures of phonological skills contributed unique variance to nonword reading: phonological processing and verbal short-term memory skills. In contrast, the only unique predictor of exception word reading was reading experience. The results are discussed within a connectionist framework that views the decoding deficit in dyslexia as stemming from poorly specified phonological representations. The extent of the nonword reading deficit is determined by the severity of the underlying phonological impairment. In contrast, exception word reading is influenced more by print exposure

Learning to read: developing processes for recognizing, understanding and pronouncing written words

Major theories of how skilled readers recognize, understand and pronounce written words include processes for phonological recoding (i.e., translating segments of print to their corresponding segments of sound) and processes by which direct access is achieved from printed words to their meanings. If these are the processes employed in skilled reading, then these are the processes which children learning to read must develop in order to become skilled readers. This paper reviews experimental findings relevant to the development of both sets of processes in beginning and early readers

Parallel and serial reading processes in children's word and nonword reading

Fluent reading is characterized by rapid and accurate identification of words. It is commonly accepted that such identification relies on the availability of orthographic knowledge. However, whether this orthographic knowledge should be seen as an accumulation of word-specific knowledge in a lexicon acquired through decoding or as a well-developed associative network of sublexical units is still under debate. We studied this key issue in reading research by looking at the serial and/or parallel reading processes underlying word and nonword reading. Participants were 314 Dutch 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders. The children were administered digit, word, and nonword naming tasks. We used latent class analyses to distinguish between readers who processed the letter strings serially or in parallel, based on the correlation patterns of word and nonword reading with serial and discrete digit naming. The 2 classes of readers were distinguished for both word and nonword reading. The validity of these classes was supported by differences in sensitivity to word and nonword length. Interestingly, the different classes seemed to reflect a developmental shift from reading all letter strings serially toward parallel processing of words, and later of nonwords. The results are not fully in line with current theories on the representation of orthographic knowledge. Implications in terms of models of the reading process are discussed

The Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Emotional Word Recognition

To investigate if making a word harder to read attenuates emotional influences like valence and arousal, we used a sample of Warriner and colleagues’ (2013) corpus with valence and arousal norms, a font manipulation from the perceptual fluency paradigm, and a word naming task. We found that, contrary to our hypotheses, emotional influences of words on RT were not attenuated in the disfluent condition; in fact, disfluency seemed to amplify the facilitative effects of high arousal. These results suggest that models of word recognition should consider the role that emotions play in recognition. They also provide limited support to models that emphasize the importance of perceptual features (e.g., Fritsch & Kuchinke, 2013) as well as the facilitative effect of high valence words (e.g., automatic vigilance), but, ultimately, do not fit into one specific theoretical framework. This study also represents the first application of perceptual fluency in emotional word recognition

The contributions of decoding skill and lexical knowledge to the development of irregular word reading

Two recent computational models of reading development propose that irregular words are read using a combination of decoding and lexical knowledge but differ in assumptions about how these sources of information interact, and about the relative importance of different aspects of lexical knowledge. We report developmental data that help to adjudicate these differences. Study One adopted a correlational approach to investigate the item-level relations between the ability to read a word aloud, general decoding ability, and knowledge of the word’s phonological form (lexical phonology) or meaning (lexical semantics). We found that the latter three factors all influenced accuracy of oral reading. We observed trends indicating that the impact of differences in decoding skill and lexical knowledge were more prominent for irregular words. Study Two comprised two experiments in which novel irregular words were taught; in Experiment 1 we compared phonological to no pre-training, while in Experiment 2 we compared phonological to phonological plus semantics pre-training. Exposure to the phonological form of the word had a substantial impact in the early stages of learning, while the impact of adding semantics was more modest and emerged later. Our findings provide strong evidence that irregular words are read using a combination of decoding and lexical knowledge, with a greater contribution from lexical phonology than lexical semantics. Computational models of learning to read are currently unable to fully account for our data, therefore we propose some modifications. We advocate an instructional approach whereby phonics and vocabulary teaching are combined to support irregular word reading

Vocabulary is important for some, but not all reading skills

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children of 8-10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for unique variance in exception word reading and reading comprehension, but not text reading accuracy, decoding and regular word reading. Consistent with these data, children with poor reading comprehension exhibited oral vocabulary weaknesses and read fewer exception words correctly. These findings demonstrate that oral vocabulary is associated with some, but not all reading skills. Results are discussed in terms of current models of reading development