Temporal and causal reasoning in deaf and hearing novice readers

Temporal and causal information in text are crucial in helping the reader form a coherent representation of a narrative. Deaf novice readers are generally poor at processing linguistic markers of causal/temporal information (i.e., connectives), but what is unclear is whether this is indicative of a more general deficit in reasoning about temporal/causal information. In Study 1, 10 deaf and 63 hearing children, matched for comprehension ability and age, were compared on a range of tasks tapping temporal/causal reasoning skills. In Study 2, 20 deaf and 32 hearing children, matched for age but not reading comprehension ability, were compared on revised versions of the tasks. The pattern of performance of the deaf was different from that of the hearing; they had difficulties when temporal and causal reasoning was text-based, but not when it was nonverbal, indicating that their global temporal/causal reasoning skills are comparable with those of their hearing counterparts

Typing pictures: linguistic processing cascades into finger movements

The present study investigated the effect of psycholinguistic variables on measures of response latency and mean interkeystroke interval in a typewritten picture naming task, with the aim to outline the functional organization of the stages of cognitive processing and response execution associated with typewritten word production. Onset latencies were modulated by lexical and semantic variables traditionally linked to lexical retrieval, such as word frequency, age of acquisition, and naming agreement. Orthographic variables, both at the lexical and sublexical level, appear to influence just within-word interkeystroke intervals, suggesting that orthographic information may play a relevant role in controlling actual response execution. Lexical-semantic variables also influenced speed of execution. This points towards cascaded flow of activation between stages of lexical access and response execution

The effect of language specific factors on early written composition: the role of spelling, oral language and text generation skills in a shallow orthography

none3simixedArfé, Barbara; Dockrell, Julie E.; De Bernardi, BiancaArfe', Barbara; Dockrell, Julie E.; De Bernardi, Bianc

The text simplification in TERENCE

n this paper we present the TERENCE system of text simplification. The TERENCE simplification system is intended for use by researchers, educators and policy makers. The method is innovative in the field for two reasons. Firstly, differently from other methods of automatic or manual simplification, it offers a graded, cumulative, simplification of texts. Secondly, differently from other existing methods, it offers a system tailored for two groups of poor comprehenders (deaf and hearing). This paper illustrates the process of text simplification used in TERENCE and presents preliminary results of its testing with elementary school children

Assessing connective understanding with visual and verbal tasks

.The role of temporal and causal connectives is relevant in reading comprehension. Children with comprehension difficulties have problems in interpreting these connectives (e.g. Amidon, 1976; Feagans, 1980; Pyykk\uf4nen, Niemi and J\ue4rvikivi, 2003; Trosborg, 1982). The Adaptive Learning System (ALS) TERENCE aims to develop children\u2019s comprehension through the use of adaptive visual and verbal games. Within this framework, the purpose of this study was to assess connective comprehension with three visual and verbal tasks. Two hundred and eight English and Italian children participated in this study. The main results show that the use of pictures does not always support comprehension. Moreover, less skilled children perform better at simultaneous connective \u201cwhile\u201d compared to the temporal sequential connectives (before, after) and causal (because) ones