Emergent Reading and Brain Development

Emergent reading emphasizes the developmental continuum aspect of learning to read and advocates the importance of reading-related behaviors occurring before school. Brain imaging evidence has suggested high plasticity of young children’s brains, and emergent reading experience can shape the brain development supporting fluent reading. The brain imaging evidence elucidates our understanding of the importance of emergent reading from a neurobiological point of view. Future studies are needed to understand how emergent reading experience can become protective factor for children at risk for reading impairments. Future studies need to design early interventions to improve emergent reading experience which is a crucial period

Effects of Morphographic Instruction on Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students\u27 Morphographic Analysis Skills

Students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) have delayed morphographic knowledge (Gaustad, Kelly, Payne, & Lylak, 2002) that negatively affects their morphographic analysis (Gaustad & Kelly, 2004) and decoding abilities (Carlisle, 2000). According to the lexical quality hypothesis, proficient readers must decode in orthographic chunks or morphographs to allow for higher quality lexical retrieval (Perfetti, 2002). Morphographic analysis instruction may improve DHH students’ morphographic knowledge delay (Nunes, Burman, Evans, & Bell, 2010). Spelling through Morphograhs (Dixon & Engelmann, 2007) is a Direct Instruction curriculum that teaches morphographic analysis and affixes meanings through scripted lessons and planned practice. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of morphographic instruction modeled after Spelling through Morphographs (Dixon & Engelmann, 2007) on the morphographic analysis skills of reading-delayed DHH students attending fourth through eighth grade. The research question was: What effect does morphographic instruction have on the morphographic analysis skills of DHH students with a second to fourth grade reading level? The study included three student participants and one teacher participant from a local school district. The researcher used a multi-probe multiple baseline across participants design followed by visual analysis of the data to determine the effects of morphographic instruction on the student participants’ morphographic knowledge. The intervention improved DHH students’ ability to dissect words and determine affix meanings, which may in turn positively affect their decoding abilities. Implications of this study and future research are discussed

Investigation into the underlying linguistic cues of Chinese synaesthesia

Synaesthesia is a neurological condition in which a sensory or cognitive stimulus consistently co-activates another sensory/cognitive quality, in addition to its usual qualities. For example, synaesthetes might see colours when they read words. This additional quality can be from a different modality (e.g., tactile stimuli triggering colour in addition to touch sensations) or from different aspects within the same modality (e.g. visually perceived shape stimuli triggering colour in addition to shape sensations). Coloured language is one of the most common, and most studied types of synaesthesia. The processes that govern such systematic associations of colours and language have been linked to the mechanisms underlying the processing of language. This thesis provides the first psycholinguistic exploration of synaesthesia in Chinese, in particular about how synaesthetic colouring is triggered from Chinese characters and their phonetic spellings in relation to psycholinguistic processes of character recognition. This thesis presents six empirical studies to provide evidence for the following facts: (a) that synaesthetic colouring of Chinese characters is a genuine phenomenon in the Chinese population and may affect as many as 1 in 100 Chinese people, with a (non-significant) female-to-male ratio of about 2:1; (b) that synaesthetic colours are influenced by the characters' constituent radicals (i.e., morphemic units), and (c) also by their associated phonetic spellings (in the spelling systems known as Pinyin and Bopomo); and (d) that even non-synaesthete Chinese speakers colour characters in predictable ways. These findings are discussed in relation to native (L1) versus non-native (L2) Chinese synaesthetes, and to the Chinese versus English systems. Hence, a further issue of this thesis considers how synaesthetic colouring in one's first language may affect their colouring in later-acquired languages. Synaesthetic transfer is discussed in relation to how, and how fast, the transfer can be established to a new language. Taken together, this thesis provides the most detailed information so far available about mechanisms that trigger synaesthetic colours in the Chinese language

The Orthographic Assimilation of Nsibidi Ideograms

This thesis calls into question the silently-held presumption that the Latinization (i.e. the use of Latin alphabets in transcription) of indigenous languages in southeastern Nigeria is both necessary and sufficient for their orthography. The arguments presented herein aim to demonstrate the fact that Latinization has systematically excluded an entire realm of symbols and meanings which facilitate the inter-subjective transfer of ideas; realms that cannot always be navigated by relying upon transcription by way of Latin alphabets. In order to adequately address several of the weaknesses identified in the Latinized scripts, the thesis will argue for an expanded orthography that is more inclusive and representative of the sociofacts, mentifacts and artifacts that are peculiar to southeastern Nigeria

A Meta-Synthesis on the Importance of Diacritical Marks in Arabic Word Recognition for Typically Developed Arabic Readers: Toward a Comprehensive Theory

The purpose of this meta-synthesis is to formulate a hypothesis concerning the importance of diacritical marks in Arabic word recognition for typically developed Arabic readers. I propose that the importance of diacritical marks in Arabic word recognition varies as a function of grade level, stimuli frequency, and text affiliation. Stimuli commonly affiliated with narrative and informational texts are more easily read with diacritical marks in lower primary grades, where phonological recoding is the dominant reading strategy for accessing phonologically and semantically unfamiliar words. Four years of systematic exposure to standard Arabic can increase knowledge of morphology, vocabulary, and orthography to the point of developing a visual reading strategy that dominates word recognition. Thus, in the upper school grades, diacritical marks lose their supportive function for accessing stimuli commonly affiliated with narrative and informational texts; they eventually become a visual burden that compromises the direct visual access of words/texts, causing delayed semantic access and errors in accuracy. However, diacritical marks regain their supportive function when Arabic readers in the upper grades encounter stimuli that are more commonly affiliated with Quranic, literary, and poetic classical texts. These stimuli are known to have a low frequency of the derivatives, roots, and morphemic patterns with which readers are unfamiliar. Encountering these stimuli forces Arabic students to re-adopt a phonological recoding reading strategy. This meta-synthesis includes nine studies published between 1995 and 2020. The results reported in this meta-synthesis substantiate my hypothesis. The results reported in seven studies align with my hypothesis. The results reported in two studies that reported contradictory findings do not discredit my hypothesis, but rather contribute two additional variables that further refine my hypothesis. Overall, sufficient evidence supports the conclusion that the importance of diacritical marks in Arabic word recognition for typically developed Arabic readers varies as a function of grade level, stimuli frequency, and text affiliation. Developing a comprehensive theory concerning the importance of diacritical marks in Arabic word recognition would provide research-based evidence for purely anecdotal policies regarding the transition from vowelized to unvowelized script that have been used in Arabic educational systems for more than 70 years

Contrasting L1 profiles through early orthographic and phonological processing of written English

Reading is fundamental to everyday life and can appear automatic and effortless, but this seemingly simple skill involves complex interactions between neural networks within ~200ms of seeing a word. While a wealth of work has investigated when and how orthography and phonology interact during visual word recognition (VWR), much is still unclear about such early native language (L1) processing and significantly more so when considering reading a second language (L2). To investigate this, monolingual English participants (native, alphabetic L1), late bilingual Spanish-English participants (non-native, alphabetic L1), and late bilingual Chinese-English participants (non-native, non-alphabetic L1) read English words, pseudohomophones, and pseudowords in orthographic and phonological lexical decision tasks and real English words in an orthogonal rhyme recognition task. Behavioural performance was evaluated alongside event-related potential (ERP) analysis of occipital, occipitotemporal, and frontal-central activity in the ~100ms post-stimulus timeframe (i.e., P1-O, P1-OT, and N100-FC components, respectively) as well as the ~170ms timeframe at occipitotemporal sites (N170-OT) following documented associations with early orthographic and/or phonological processing. Crucially, interpretations of analyses took the markedly different language profiles into account to examine how L1 might influence L2 processing. Patterns of behaviour and electrophysiology showed similarities but distinguished between groups based on language profiles. Analysis highlighted evidence for early orthography-phonology mapping at occipitotemporal sites, parallel orthographic/phonological processing at frontal-central sites at ~100ms, and a lack of VWR-related occipitotemporal N170 effects across groups. Findings, overall, suggest that language profiles underlie early orthographic and phonological processing and that the three groups have distinct neural strategies for VWR linked to orthographic and phonological aspects of their language profiles. Ultimately, the outcomes support the importance of L1 properties and L1-L2 relationships (i.e., language profiles) in bilingual VWR and the increased consideration of these factors in future development of monolingual and bilingual theories and models of VWR

English speakers' common orthographic errors in Arabic as L2 writing system : an analytical case study

PhD ThesisThe research involving Arabic Writing System (WS) is quite limited. Yet, researching writing errors of L2WS Arabic against a certain L1WS seems to be relatively neglected. This study attempts to identify, describe, and explain common orthographic errors in Arabic writing amongst English-speaking learners. First, it outlines the Arabic Writing System’s (AWS) characteristics and available empirical studies of L2WS Arabic. This study embraced the Error Analysis approach, utilising a mixed-method design that deployed quantitative and qualitative tools (writing tests, questionnaire, and interview). The data were collected from several institutions around the UK, which collectively accounted for 82 questionnaire responses, 120 different writing samples from 44 intermediate learners, and six teacher interviews. The hypotheses for this research were; a) English-speaking learners of Arabic make common orthographic errors similar to those of Arabic native speakers; b) English-speaking learners share several common orthographic errors with other learners of Arabic as a second/foreign language (AFL); and c) English-speaking learners of Arabic produce their own common orthographic errors which are specifically related to the differences between the two WSs. The results confirmed all three hypotheses. Specifically, English-speaking learners of L2WS Arabic commonly made six error types: letter ductus (letter shape), orthography (spelling), phonology, letter dots, allographemes (i.e. letterform), and direction. Gemination and L1WS transfer error rates were not found to be major. Another important result showed that five letter groups in addition to two letters are particularly challenging to English-speaking learners. Study results indicated that error causes were likely to be from one of four factors: script confusion, orthographic difficulties, phonological realisation, and teaching/learning strategies. These results are generalizable as the data were collected from several institutions in different parts of the UK. Suggestions and implications as well as recommendations for further research are outlined accordingly in the conclusion chapter