Are acquired dyslexias and dysgraphias language: specific or universal?

The aim of the current paper is to provide a review of the neuropsychology of acquired reading and writing impairments from an orthographic transparency perspective within the dual-route framework. Orthographic transparency refers to the ease with which one can directly predict phonology (sound) from orthography (print) in a given alphabetic writing system. Writing systems with highly predictable mappings between print and sound are said to be transparent (e.g. Turkish, Italian, Spanish) whilst unpredictable mappings between print and sound lead to opaque writing systems (e.g. English, French, Arabic). In addition, in some orthographies (such as Persian) transparent and opaque words coexist in print. The impact of orthographic transparency on normal (and impaired) language processing has led to the development of at least two opposing views, namely the orthographic depth hypothesis and the universal hypothesis. Ultimately the objective here is to demonstrate how neurological damage to the language area in the brain is linked to acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia irrespective of orthographic transparency. That is, neurological damage to the brain yields impairments that are universal in nature but perhaps manifested in a different way depending on the specific characteristics of the language. Evidence from atypically transparent Turkish orthography will be utilised to argue in favour of the universal hypothesis

The role of context on age of acquisition effect: strategic control in word naming in Turkish

Processes involved in converting print to sound are reported to be flexible and under the strategic control of skilled readers even in transparent orthographies. In this respect, word frequency effect, regularity, and lexicality have been the topic of much research and debate in understanding how context is involved in the emergence of strategies. However, whether age of acquisition (AoA) effects are influenced by context and under the strategic control of readers have yet to be established. A series of single-word naming experiments addresses this issue and examines the role of filler type critically manipulated on lexicality, frequency, and imageability on the size of AoA effect in word naming in an entirely transparent orthography. Overall, results, which are discussed within the current theoretical frameworks, suggest that context plays a significant role on AoA

Single-word naming in a transparent alphabetic orthography.

The cognitive processes involved in single-word naming of the transparent Turkish orthography were examined in a series of nine naming experiments on adult native readers. In Experiment 1, a significant word frequency effect was observed when matched (i.e. on initial phoneme, letter length and number of syllables) high- and low-frequency words were presented for naming. However, no frequency effect was found in Experiment 2, when an equal number of matched (i.e. on initial phoneme, letter length and number of syllables) nonword fillers were mixed with the target words. A null frequency effect was also found in Experiment 3 when conditions were mixed-blocks, i.e. high- and low frequency were words presented in separate blocks mixed with an equal number of matched nonword fillers. Experiment 4 served the purpose of creating and validating nonwords (to be used in Experiments 5 and 6) that could be named as fast as high- and low-frequency words by manipulating the letter length of nonwords. A significant word frequency effect emerged with both the mixed-block design (Experiment 5) and mixed design (Experiment 6) when the nonword fillers matched the target words in speed of naming. Experiment 7, however, found no frequency effect when high- and low-frequency words were mixed with word fillers that were slower to be named (longer in length) than the target words. In Experiment 8, frequency was factorially manipulated with imageability (high vs. low) and level of skill (very skilled vs. skilled) which found significant main effects for word frequency and level of skill, and a significant 2-way interaction of skill by imageability and a significant 3-way interaction of skill by imageability by frequency. In Experiment 9, however, there was only a main effect for frequency when previously skilled readers performed on the same words used in Experiment 8. These findings suggest that whilst a lexical route dominates in naming the transparent Turkish orthography, an explanation that the readers shut down the operation of this route in the presence of nonword fillers is not entertained. Instead, the results suggest that both routes operate in naming, with the inclusion of filler stimuli and their “perceived difficulty” having an impact in the time criterion for articulation. Moreover, there are indications that a semantic route is involved in naming Turkish only when level of skill is taken into account. Implications of these findings for models of single-word naming are discussed

The influence of age of acquisition on recall and recognition in Alzheimer’s patients and healthy ageing controls in Turkish

The current study set out to examine the influence of AoA on word recall and recognition tasks in 30 Alzheimer’s patients and 28 healthy ageing control group. Each participant was presented with 20 words from Raman, Raman and Mertan (2014) norms that critically varied on AoA. A subtest of WAIS-R (Weschler, 1981; adapted into Turkish, Yılmaz, 2000) was employed to establish the vocabulary capacity of participants together with the Mini-Mental State Examination (Folstein, Folstein, and McHugh, 1975). The pattern of results showed that healthy ageing adults outperformed Alzheimer’s patients in recall and recognition tasks and that overall early acquired words had an advantage over late acquired words. The results have implications for developing assessment tools and are discussed within the current theories of age of acquisition and the impact of the neurodegenerative loss of memory in Alzheimer's disease on lexicosemantic processing

Succinct Indexable Dictionaries with Applications to Encoding kk-ary Trees, Prefix Sums and Multisets

We consider the {\it indexable dictionary} problem, which consists of storing a set $S \subseteq \{0,...,m-1\}$ for some integer $m$, while supporting the operations of \Rank(x), which returns the number of elements in $S$ that are less than $x$ if $x \in S$, and -1 otherwise; and \Select(i) which returns the $i$-th smallest element in $S$. We give a data structure that supports both operations in O(1) time on the RAM model and requires ${\cal B}(n,m) + o(n) + O(\lg \lg m)$ bits to store a set of size $n$, where {\cal B}(n,m) = \ceil{\lg {m \choose n}} is the minimum number of bits required to store any $n$-element subset from a universe of size $m$. Previous dictionaries taking this space only supported (yes/no) membership queries in O(1) time. In the cell probe model we can remove the $O(\lg \lg m)$ additive term in the space bound, answering a question raised by Fich and Miltersen, and Pagh. We present extensions and applications of our indexable dictionary data structure, including: An information-theoretically optimal representation of a $k$-ary cardinal tree that supports standard operations in constant time, A representation of a multiset of size $n$ from $\{0,...,m-1\}$ in ${\cal B}(n,m+n) + o(n)$ bits that supports (appropriate generalizations of) \Rank and \Select operations in constant time, and A representation of a sequence of $n$ non-negative integers summing up to $m$ in ${\cal B}(n,m+n) + o(n)$ bits that supports prefix sum queries in constant time.Comment: Final version of SODA 2002 paper; supersedes Leicester Tech report 2002/1

The role of communication apprehension and self stigma of academic help-seeking in native and non-native English speakers: evidence from UK university students

Although communication apprehension (CA) has long been reported to hinder communication skills and academic attainment, its cumulative impact on self-stigma of academic help-seeking in a global education market has nevertheless been overlooked. The present study examined the relationship between CA and self-stigma of academic help-seeking among British university students who acquired English at different stages in their lives and its impact on achievement. Data were collected from 150 students who completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) and the self-stigma of academic help-seeking scale together with a demographic questionnaire. Overall, the findings showed a significant relationship between CA and self-stigma of academic help-seeking while age of English acquisition, residency status and level of study were also found to have a significant effect on the level of CA. The implications of the results are discussed within the higher education provision, pedagogy and psychological frameworks

Quantum and Classical Dynamics of a BEC in a Large-Period Optical Lattice

We experimentally investigate diffraction of a Rb-87 Bose-Einstein condensate from a 1D optical lattice. We use a range of lattice periods and timescales, including those beyond the Raman-Nath limit. We compare the results to quantum mechanical and classical simulations, with quantitative and qualitative agreement, respectively. The classical simulation predicts that the envelope of the time-evolving diffraction pattern is shaped by caustics: singularities in the phase space density of classical trajectories. This behavior becomes increasingly clear as the lattice period grows.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Semantic priming in Russian monolingual and Russian (L1) – English (L2) bilingual speakers in a single word naming task: semantic priming in Russian

Identifying and exploring factors that influence bilingual language processing has been the topic of much psycholinguistic research. Semantic priming is typically used to examine semantic processing and refers to the phenomenon in which semantically related items (doctor-nurse) are processed faster and more accurately than semantically unrelated items (doctor-butter). The aim of the chapter is to address two key questions: 1) how the two languages of a bilingual are organised or stored and 2) how the two languages are processed. A review of the literature shows that there are currently no theoretical frameworks that explain Russian monolingual or Russian (L1)-English (L2) bilingual storage or processing. Monolingual Russian speakers and bilingual Russian (L1)-English (L2) speaking university students were asked to name target words under related or unrelated conditions. The results show that the magnitude of the semantic priming effect was determined by L2 proficiency. The implications for these findings is discussed within the current bilingual theoretical models

Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect in monolingual Russian and bilingual Russian (L1) - English (L2) speakers in a free recall task

AoA is a unique psycholinguistic variable because of its link to the semantic architecture of the mental lexicon (e.g., Brysbaert, Wijnendaele & de Deyne, 2000). The role of AoA on free recall has been examined in English (Coltheart & Winograd, 1986; Dewhurst, Hitch & Barry, 1998) and recently in Turkish (Raman, Raman, Ikier et al, under revision) with contradictory outcomes. While an overall advantage was found for late acquired items in English, the contrary was reported in Turkish. Furthermore, this effect appeared to be modulated by frequency and whether items were presented in pure or mixed lists. The present study extends Raman et al study to monolingual Russian and bilingual Russian (L1) – English (L2) speakers in order to understand the extent to which AoA affects free recall. One interesting aspect of Russian writing system is that it consists of Cyrillic and Roman letters, hence creating a shared orthographic medium in Russian-English bilinguals. Participants were allocated to either picture or word condition and subsequently to either pure list or mixed list condition. Both monolingual Russian (N=42) and bilingual (N=40) Russian (L1) – English (L2) data show a robust main effect for AoA in free recall irrespective of list type for words and for pictures and no significant interactions. Overall, early acquired words and pictures had an advantage over late acquired items. These findings are contrary to what has been reported in the literature for monolingual English speakers (Dewhurst et al, 1998) but in line with findings for Turkish (Raman et al, under revision) and will be discussed within the monolingual and bilingual theoretical frameworks