The role of oral vocabulary when L2 speakers read novel words : A complex word training study

The present study asked whether oral vocabulary training can facilitate reading in a second language (L2). Fifty L2 speakers of English received oral training over three days on complex novel words, with predictable and unpredictable spellings, composed of novel stems and existing suffixes (i.e., vishing, vishes, vished). After training, participants read the novel word stems for the first time (i.e., trained and untrained), embedded in sentences, and their eye movements were monitored. The eye-tracking data revealed shorter looking times for trained than untrained stems, and for stems with predictable than unpredictable spellings. In contrast to monolingual speakers of English, the interaction between training and spelling predictability was not significant, suggesting that L2 speakers did not generate orthographic skeletons that were robust enough to affect their eye-movement behaviour when seeing the trained novel words for the first time in print

Acquisition of orthographic forms via complex spoken word training

This study used a novel word-training paradigm to examine the integration of spoken word knowledge when learning to read morphologically complex novel words. Australian primary school children including Grades 3–5 were taught the oral form of a set of novel morphologically complex words (e.g., (/vɪbɪŋ/, /vɪbd/, /vɪbz/), with a second set serving as untrained items. Following oral training, participants saw the printed form of the novel word stems for the first time (e.g., vib), embedded in sentences, while their eye movements were monitored. Half of the stems were spelled predictably and half were spelled unpredictably. Reading times were shorter for orally trained stems with predictable than unpredictable spellings and this difference was greater for trained than untrained items. These findings suggest that children were able to form robust orthographic expectations of the embedded morphemic stems during spoken word learning, which may have occurred automatically without any explicit control of the applied mappings, despite still being in the early stages of reading development. Following the sentence reading task, children completed a reading-aloud task where they were exposed to the novel orthographic forms for a second time. The findings are discussed in the context of theories of reading acquisition

What Cross-morphemic Letter Transposition in Derived Nonwords Tells us about Lexical Processing

According to an obligatory decomposition account of polymorphemic word recognition, a nonword that is composed of a real word plus derivational affix (e.g., teachen) should prime its stem (TEACH) to the same extent that a truly suffixed word does (e.g., teacher). The stem will be activated in both cases after the suffix is removed prior to the lexical status of the letter-string being of relevance. Importantly, disruption to the stem and suffix through letter transposition should have the same impact on the nonwords and words, with teacehn and teacehr equally priming TEACH. However, an experiment by Diependaele, Morris, Serota, Bertrand, and Grainger (2013) found that the equivalent priming for nonwords and words only occurred when they were intact. When letters were transposed, only the truly derived words showed priming. Since such a result cannot be handled by an obligatory decomposition account, it is important to replicate it. Therefore, the present study repeated the conditions of Diependaele et al. (2013), along with a nonword condition where the stem was followed by a non-suffix (e.g., teachin or teacihn). It was found that priming was maintained across all conditions regardless of letter transposition, hence maintaining obligatory decomposition as a viable account. However, the findings with the non-suffixed nonwords led to the conclusion that morphological structure does not control decomposition, but rather, has its impact after form-based components of the letter-string have been activated

Eye movements during reading

Written words are everywhere. Learning to read is one of the main tasks of our early school years, and the ability to read opens up a world of possibilities—we can absorb ourselves in stories, remind ourselves of important information, and learn new things. But few of us think about what we are actually doing as we read. Moving the eyes is essential for reading. For instance, to read this sentence, you probably began by looking at the first word before moving your eyes to each word in turn. All the while, you are working hard to recognize and understand each word. In this article, you will learn about why eye movements are a necessary part of reading, how they are measured, what they tell scientists about what is happening in the mind during reading, and how they change as children grow into adults

Orthographic consistency influences morphological processing in reading aloud: Evidence from a cross‐linguistic study

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Morphological processing in adults and children during visual word recognition

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, 2011.Includes bibliographical references.1. Introduction -- 2. Parallel processing of whole-words and morphemes in visual word recognition -- 3. Early morphological decomposition during visual word recognition : evidence from masked transposed-letter printing -- 4. Early morphological decomposition of suffixed words : masked priming evidence with transposed-letter nonword primes -- 5. Morphological processing during visual word recognition in developing readers : evidence from masked priming -- 6. Summary and conculsions.The research presented in this thesis examines cognitive processes involved in the recognition of written morphologically complex words in skilled readers and the acquisition of these mechanisms in developing readers. All experiments focus on non-strategic aspects of rapid morphological segmentation, exploring the nature of underlying lower-level orthographic processing constraints in morphological decomposition. The influences of orthographic processing constraints upon morphological processing are explored by distinguishing between lower-level morpho-orthographic and higher-lever morpho-semantic processing mechanisms. The introductory thesis chapter reviews evidence of different forms of purely structural non-semantic morphological processes and discusses the implication for morphological processing theories as well as orthographic processing theories. The role of morphological decomposition in visual word recognition is then examined across four different chapters (testing 446 adult participants and 72 children), in both English and Spanish native speakers. To explore non-conscious stages of cognitive processing, the present research draws upon the masked priming paradigm, providing a window into early, automatic processes in visual word recognition. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, a novel approach is used combining the masked priming paradigm with the transposed-letter priming paradigm to examine if and how the encoding of morphological information is modulated by lower-level letter position processing mechanisms, in skilled readers. The final chapter provides a summary of the presented findings across all chapters and gives an outlook on future research prospects. We conclude that morphological processing in both skilled and developing readers is based on both morphoorthographic and morpho-semantic processing mechanism, which we discuss in the context of current morphological processing theories.Mode of access: World Wide Web.x, 173 p. il

Sand, Sandpaper, and Sandwiches: Evidence From a Masked Compound Priming Task in L1 and L2 Speakers of English

This study follows the footsteps of Jonathan Grainger and colleagues by investigating compound processing in English monolinguals and Chinese-English bilinguals using the masked primed lexical decision paradigm. First language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers responded to a semantically transparent compound (e.g., snowball-SNOW), a semantically opaque compound (honeymoon-HONEY), and an orthographic control condition (e.g., sandwich-SAND). Results revealed significantly larger L1 priming effects in transparent and opaque compared to the control condition (Experiment 1A), whereas no significant differences across conditions were observed in L2 speakers (Experiment 1B). We argue that L1 populations are sensitive to morphological structure during the early stages of compound processing, whereas L2 speakers, in particular those with lower levels of language proficiency, employ a form-based type of analysis. Findings are interpreted within the framework of recent monolingual and bilingual models of complex word recognition

That’s good news ☹ : Semantic congruency effects in emoji processing

The use of emojis in digital communication has become increasingly popular, but how emojis are processed and integrated in reading processes remains underexplored. This study used eye-tracking to monitor university students’ (n = 47) eye movements while reading single-line text messages with a face emoji embedded medially. Messages contained a semantically congruent emoji (e.g., That’s good news \u1f60a tell me more), a semantically incongruent emoji (e.g., That’s good news ☹ tell me more), or a dash (e.g., That’s good news – tell me more). Results revealed that emoji congruency did not influence early fixation measures (first fixation duration and gaze duration), nor the probability of regressions. However, there was a significant congruency effect in total reading time and trial dwell time, showing that incongruence incurred a processing cost. The present results extend previously reported semantic congruency effects in sentence reading to the processing of emojis. This result suggests that the semantic content conveyed by face emojis is integrated with sentence context late in processing. We further found that the use of congruent emojis improved the relationship between sender and receiver: Ratings collected separately suggested that message senders were liked better if they included congruent than incongruent emojis. Overall, emojis attracted attention: Participants were twice as likely to fixate on emojis than on dashes, and to fixate on emojis for longer