Dissociations between serial position and number of letters effects in lateralised visual word recognition

Some previous studies of visual word recognition have reported an interaction between visual field and word length (measured by number of letters), such that recognition is affected more by word length for words presented in the left than for words presented in the right visual field. However, when manipulating serial position of letters in words to measure length effects, there are also reports of symmetrical word length effects in the two visual fields. Here we report two experiments, presenting four‐ and seven‐letter words, suggesting that the serial position and length effects in the hemispheres are separable and task dependent. For tasks that rely more heavily on letter‐level processing such as letter search (Experiment 1), performance in both hemifields showed similar effects of serial position; however, when comparing four‐ and seven‐letter words, an effect of word length was evident only in the left visual field, in line with the well‐established interaction between word length and hemifield. An interaction between word length and hemifield was confirmed for the same stimuli when they were employed in a lexical decision task, which forced whole‐word processing (Experiment 2). We conclude that the effects of serial position and number of letters in the two visual fields are separable, and are selectively affected by task type.     

The Use of Letter Position Cues in the Visual Processing of Words by Children with an Intellectual Disability and Nondisabled Children

TWO EXPERIMENTS were designed to investigate possible deficiencies in strategies used for decoding words by children with an intellectual disability. The experiments focused specifically on the use of letter position cues as aids to word identification. In Experiment 1,20 children with an intellectual disability (ID) aged 10 to 12 years were matched with two groups of nondisabled children, one for mental age (MA) and one for chronological age (CA), on a visual search task, with response times to array types (word, pseudoword, or nonword) and target position in positive arrays as the dependent variable. The ID group showed response time advantages only when the target letter was in the initial position of an array; however both nondisabled groups responded faster when the target letter was in either the initial or final position, compared to the medial position, and this pattern occurred for words (MA group) and words and pseudowords (CA group) but not for nonwords. Experiment 2 extended the investigation to the oral reading of isolated words. In substitution errors made by children with an intellectual disability, the incorrect word tended to resemble the test word only in the initial letter. In errors made by MA‐matched children, however, both the initial and final letters tended to be the same as those in the test word, suggesting that these are salient cues to word recognition. The findings are interpreted with reference to previous work on early reading acquisition and to research which suggests a more generalised deficiency in the acquisition and use of strategies by ID subjects in cognitive tasks.     

Adult word recognition and visual sequential memory

Two experiments were conducted investigating the role of visual sequential memory skill in the word recognition efficiency of undergraduate university students. Word recognition was assessed in a lexical decision task using regularly and strangely spelt words, and nonwords that were either standard orthographically legal strings or items made from words with internal transposed letters. Symbol memory was evaluated in a recognition procedure in which sequences of three to five unfamiliar complex symbols were presented, each followed by a subsequent array containing the symbols either in the same order or with an order transposition. In Experiment 1, there was no independent contribution of symbol memory to either word or nonword processing independently of the ability to discriminate the symbols from one another. In Experiment 2, although symbol memory made a significant contribution to word recognition independently of symbol discrimination and letter identification for two conditions??long strangely spelt words and short transposed-letter items, the effects were extremely small. It was concluded that non-verbal visual sequential memory skill does not play a central role in underpinning efficiency of word recognition in experienced adult readers.     

The time course of incremental word processing during Chinese reading

In the current study, we report two eye movement experiments investigating how Chinese readers process incremental words during reading. These are words where some of the component characters constitute another word (an embedded word). In two experiments, eye movements were monitored while the participants read sentences with incremental words whose first two characters (Experiment 1) or last two characters (Experiment 2) constituted a word (referred to respectively as “head-embedded” and “tail embedded”). Reading times on these words were longer when the frequencies of the embedded words were lower. However, this was only seen on first fixation duration for head-embedded words. These results suggest that embedded words are activated when Chinese readers process incremental words, and that this activation is earlier for a head-embedded word than for a tail-embedded word. These results support a hierarchical model which assumes that the representation for whole word is activated via the representation of its constituent morphemes.     

The influence of reading unit size on the development of Stroop interference in early word decoding

The purpose of the experiments was to determine the automatic use of large or small word reading units in young readers in the absence of word decoding strategies. Picture-word Stroop interference was examined from four types of conflicting labels: (a) words containing both highly predictable grapheme–phoneme correspondence (GPC) units and highly consistent rime units (henceforth, Hi-GPC + Hi-Rime); (b) words with highly predictable GPC units and less consistent rime units (Hi-GPC + Lo-Rime); (c) words with low predictability GPC units and highly consistent rime units (Low GPC + High Rime); (d) nonwords that contained both highly predictable GPC and highly consistent rime units. Naming time for pictures containing these labels was compared against that for pictures with random letter strings or no labels. In Experiment 1, Stroop interference was examined in first, second, and third grade children to determine whether there was developmental change in the presence of rime or GPC interference. In Experiment 2, Stroop interference was examined as a function of relative reading skill in first grade children. In Experiment 3, Stroop interference in adults was compared to the use of rime or GPC pronunciation strategies for nonword reading. In all experiments, Stroop interference in picture naming was longer for pictures with highly predictable GPC unit labels than less predictable GPC unit labels. However, in Experiment 3, even though adults showed interference from predictable GPC units in the Stroop task, they always preferred rime pronunciation for ambiguous nonwords in the nonword reading task. It is argued that the current experiments provide evidence for a flexible units model. The results of this study were presented at the Cognitive Development Society meeting, November 2001, Virginia Beach, VA, and the American Educational Research Association meeting, April 2004, San Diego, California.     

Visual constraints in written word recognition: evidence from the optimal viewing‐position effect

In this paper we review the literature on visual constraints in written word processing. We notice that not all letters are equally visible to the reader. The letter that is most visible is the letter that is fixated. The visibility of the other letters depends on the distance between the letters and the fixation location, whether the letters are outer or inner letters of the word, and whether the letters lie to the left or to the right of the fixation location. Because of these three factors, word recognition depends on the viewing position. In languages read from left to right, the optimal viewing position is situated between the beginning and the middle of the word. This optimal viewing position is the result of an interplay of four variables: the distance between the viewing position and the farthest letter, the fact that the word beginning is usually more informative than the word end, the fact that during reading words have been recognised a lot of times after fixation on this letter position and the fact that stimuli in the right visual field have direct access to the left cerebral hemisphere. For languages read from right to left, the first three variables pull the optimal viewing position towards the right side of the word (which is the word beginning), but the fourth variable counteracts these forces to some extent. Therefore, the asymmetry of the optimum viewing‐position curve is less clear in Hebrew and Arabic than in French and Dutch.     

Whole‐word shape effect in dyslexia

The research question here was whether whole‐word shape cues might facilitate reading in dyslexia following reports of how normal‐reading children benefit from using this cue when learning to read. We predicted that adults with dyslexia would tend to rely more on orthographic rather than other cues when reading, and therefore would be more affected by word shape manipulations. This prediction was tested in a lexical decision task on words with a flat or a non‐flat outline (i.e. without or with letters with ascending/descending features). We found that readers with dyslexia were significantly faster when reading non‐flat compared with flat words, while typical readers did not benefit from whole‐word shape cues. The interaction of participants' group and word shape was not modulated by word frequency; that is word outline shape facilitated reading for both rare and frequent words. Our results suggest that enhanced sensitivity to orthographic cues is developed in some cases of dyslexia when normal, phonology‐based word recognition processing is not exploited.     

Effect of orthographic processes on letter position encoding

We investigate whether orthographic processes influence the identification and encoding of letter position within letter strings. To minimise word‐specific effects, we adopt a visual letter search task that requires participants to identify a cued letter target among a random five‐letter string. Using this paradigm, previous studies have shown that letter targets to the left are identified faster than those to the right of centre and letter targets in the initial, medial and final positions are identified faster than those in neighbouring positions. While the medial letter advantage is likely to arise from greater visual acuity at the point of fixation, the mechanisms responsible for the left‐to‐right, and exterior, letter advantage have yet to be determined. We show that: (i) search functions for most letters reflect the directional scanning process required for reading English orthography; (ii) search times are significantly faster for letter targets that appear in the most, compared with the least, frequent position in written words; and (iii) search times correlate significantly with positional letter frequency, especially in the initial and final positions. We propose that a combination of low‐level visual, and higher‐level orthographic, processes modulate the encoding of letter identities and position in written word recognition.     

Eye movement behaviour during reading of Japanese sentences: Effects of word length and visual complexity

Two experiments are presented that examine how the visual characteristics of Japanese words influence eye movement behaviour during reading. In Experiment 1, reading behaviour was compared for words comprising either one or two kanji characters. The one-character words were significantly less likely to be fixated on first-pass, and had significantly longer overall reading times, than the two-character words. In Experiment 2, reading behaviour was compared for two-kanji character words, for which the first character was either visually simple or visually complex (determined by the number of strokes). Visual complexity significantly influenced total word reading times and the probability of the individual visually simple/complex characters being fixated on first pass. Additional analyses showed no preferred viewing position for two-kanji character words. Overall, the study provides experimental evidence of an influence of specific visual characteristics of Japanese words on eye movement behaviour during reading, as shown by both fixation probabilities and reading times. The findings must be explained by processing at (or beyond) a visual level impacting on eye movement behavior during reading of Japanese text.     

When half a word is enough: infants can recognize spoken words using partial phonetic information

Adults process speech incrementally, rapidly identifying spoken words on the basis of initial phonetic information sufficient to distinguish them from alternatives. In this study, infants in the second year also made use of word-initial information to understand fluent speech. The time course of comprehension was examined by tracking infants' eye movements as they looked at pictures in response to familiar spoken words, presented both as whole words in intact form and as partial words in which only the first 300 ms of the word was heard. In Experiment 1, 21-month-old infants (N = 32) recognized partial words as quickly and reliably as they recognized whole words; in Experiment 2, these findings were replicated with 18-month-old infants (N = 32). Combining the data from both experiments, efficiency in spoken word recognition was examined in relation to level of lexical development. Infants with more than 100 words in their productive vocabulary were more accurate in identifying familiar words than were infants with less than 60 words. Grouped by response speed, infants with faster mean reaction times were more accurate in word recognition and also had larger productive vocabularies than infants with slower response latencies. These results show that infants in the second year are capable of incremental speech processing even before entering the vocabulary spurt, and that lexical growth is associated with increased speed and efficiency in understanding spoken language.     

Letter Names and Alphabet Book Reading by Senior Kindergarteners: An Eye Movement Study

The study monitored the eye movements of twenty 5‐year‐old children while reading an alphabet book to examine the manner in which the letters, words, and pictures were fixated and the relation of attention to print to alphabetic knowledge. Children attended little to the print, took longer to first fixate print than illustrations, and labeled fewer letters than when presented with letters in isolation. After controlling for receptive vocabulary, regressions revealed that children knowing more letters were quicker to look at the featured letter on a page and spent more time looking at the featured letter, the word, and its first letter. Thus, alphabet books along with letter knowledge may facilitate entrance into the partial alphabetic stage of word recognition.     

Taken out of context: differential processing in contextual and isolated word reading

Three experiments are reported that investigate the cognitive processes underlying contextual and isolated word reading. In Phase 1, undergraduate participants were exposed to 75 target words under three conditions. The participants generated 25 words from definitions, read 25 words in context and read 25 in isolation. In Phase 2, volunteers completed either an explicit recall task (Experiment 1), an implicit word stem completion task (Experiment 2) or both tasks (Experiment 3). Our findings provide converging evidence that contextual and isolated word reading elicit different patterns of cognitive processing. Specifically, Experiments 1–3 demonstrated that words read in context were remembered similarly to words generated from definitions: words from both conditions were recalled more frequently in the surprise memory task and selected less often to complete the word stems in the implicit memory task. The opposite pattern was noted for words read in isolation. Reading in context is discussed in terms of its greater reliance on semantic processing, whereas isolated word reading is discussed in relation to perceptually driven processes.     

Use of context in the word recognition process by adults with a significant history of reading difficulties

We examined whether university students who report a significant history of reading difficulties (RD; n = 24) differed from university students with no history of reading difficulties (NRD; n = 31) in how sentence context affects word recognition. Experiment 1 found no differences in how congruent sentence primes or syntactic manipulations of the sentence primes affected the performance of the two groups. However, only the RD group displayed a significant inhibition effect when the target word was preceded by an incongruent sentence prime. Experiment 2 found that the groups differed in how meaning frequency of the target word and context strength of the sentence prime affected word recognition latencies. The results suggest that the RD participants’ performance is context-sensitive and better explained by interactive models of language processing than by modular models.     

Sensitivity to orthotactic rules in visual word recognition by below average readers

The study reports 2 lexical decision experiments on below average readers' sensitivity to Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure (BOSS) of Taft in visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, 20 words and 20 pseudo words with BOSS and non-BOSS conditions (e.g., tractOR, tracTOR; BLUNDin, BLUNdin) were presented on a microcomputer screen to 75 grades 4, 5, and 6 poor readers divided into poor reading/spelling subgroups. ANOVA of the correct reaction time scores shows significant main effects for grade, reading/spelling subgroup and lexicality with both word and pseudo word BOSS condition being the most discriminating. Experiment 2 provides a stronger test for the BOSS parsing principle with 48 items of correctly affixed real words (e.g., reTURN), pseudo-affixed words (e.g., ENTer), and incorrectly affixed pseudo words (e.g., AVOIDer) presented on the microcomputer screen for lexical decision. The target subjects were 20 grade 6 and 22 grade 7 below average readers compared with 23 above average chronological age control readers in each of the same grades 6 and 7. ANOVA results of the correct RT scores show significant main effects for reding level and affixation condition with the correctly affixed BOSS condition being the most discriminating. Taken together, the 2 experiments suggest that children are sensitive to the BOSS parsing principle and this could be used in promoting word knowledge.     

Processing phonological information in a semi-syllabic script: Developmental data from Telugu

Three experiments were undertaken to examinesecond and fifth grade Telugu-speaking children's awareness of phonological andorthographic properties of familiar Teluguwords. Experiment 1 focused on the strategies thechildren used in completing word fragments.Experiment 2 examined the children's ability tojudge and generate rhyming words, and Experiment 3examined the children's strategies incomprehending meanings of orthographicallysimilar rhyming vs. non-rhyming word pairs in asentence completion task. The results demonstrated that specific features ofsemi-syllabic alphabets such as Telugu interactwith phonological knowledge during theprocessing of meaningful words such thatchildren with more formal instruction inreading are able to access phonologicalinformation better than younger children withless well developed orthographic knowledge.Some pedagogic implications of the results arediscussed.     

Spelling Errors Impede Recognition of Correctly Spelled Word Forms

ABSTRACT

Spelling errors are typically thought of as an effect of a word’s weak orthographic representation in an individual mind. What if existence of spelling errors is a partial cause of effortful orthographic learning and word recognition? We selected words that had homophonic substandard spelling variants of varying frequency (e.g., innocent and inocent occur in 69% and 31% of occurrences of the word, respectively). Conventional spellings were presented for recognition either in context (Experiment 1, eye-tracking sentence reading) or in isolation (Experiment 2, lexical decision). Words elicited longer fixation durations and lexical decision latencies if there was more uncertainty (higher entropy) regarding which spelling is a preferred one. The inhibitory effect of frequency was not modulated by spelling or other reading skill. This finding is in line with theories of learning that predict spelling errors to weaken associations between conventional spellings and the word’s meaning.     

Gender differences in mental simulation during sentence and word processing

Text comprehension requires readers to mentally simulate the described situation by reactivating previously acquired sensory and motor information from (episodic) memory. Drawing upon research demonstrating gender differences, favouring girls, in tasks involving episodic memory retrieval, the present study explores whether gender differences exist in mental simulation in children (Grades 4 to 6). In Experiment 1, 99 children performed a sentence–picture verification task measuring mental simulation at sentence level. In Experiment 2, 97 children completed a lexical decision task in which imageability of words was manipulated to measure mental simulation at word level. Only for girls we found faster reaction times for matching versus mismatching sentence–picture pairs (Experiment 1) and high‐imageability versus low‐imageability words (Experiment 2). The results suggest that girls construct more coherent and vivid mental simulations than boys and rely more heavily on these representations. The results emphasize the importance of including gender into reading comprehension research. [Correction added on 13 June 2016, after first online publication: The affiliation of author “Björn B. de Koning” was previously wrong and has been corrected in this current version.]     

The role of letter knowledge acquisition ability on children's decoding and word identification: Evidence from an artificial orthography

Background

Letter knowledge is crucial in the first stages of reading development. It supports learning letter-sound mappings and the identification of the letters that make up words. Previous studies have investigated the longitudinal impact of early letter knowledge on children's further word reading abilities. This study employed an artificial orthography learning paradigm to explore whether the rate of letter learning modulates children's reading and word identification skills.

Methods

In an initial training phase, 8-year-old Spanish children (N = 30) learned nine artificial letters and their corresponding sounds (two vowels and six consonants). The letter learning rate was set according to the number of attempts needed to name at least seven letters (i.e., 80% correct). These ranged from 1 to 4. In a second training phase, children visualized words made up of the trained letters while listening to their pronunciations. Some words included a context-dependent syllable (i.e., leading to grapheme-to-phoneme inconsistency), and others had an inconsistent syllable (i.e., phoneme-to-grapheme inconsistency). The post-test consisted of a reading aloud task and an orthographic-choice task in which the target word was presented with a distractor equal to the target except for the substitution of a letter.

Results

Children showed a high accuracy rate in the post-test tasks, regardless of whether words contained context-dependent or inconsistent syllables. Critically, the letter learning rate predicted both reading aloud and identification accuracy of words in the artificial orthography.

Conclusions

We provide evidence for the vital role of letter knowledge acquisition ability in children's decoding and word identification skills. Training children on this ability facilitates serial letter-sound mapping and word identification skills. Artificial orthography paradigms are optimal for exploring children's potential to achieve specific literacy skills.

     

The use of phonological and orthographic information by normal and poor readers of Dutch

In two reading level design experiments, matched groups of normal and poor readers were compared with regard to their use of phonological and orthographic information. Experiment 1 used a semantic decision task similar to the task described in the study of Jarvella & Snodgrass (1974). Experiment 1 was aimed to assess the way normal and poor readers, matched on reading level, automatically process phonological and orthographic incongruencies when comparing the singular and plural of nouns. Experiment 2 investigated the automatized processing of uppercase-lowercase letter incongruencies in a same-different task using words and pseudowords. It assessed the role of letter feature cues involved in the initial identification process. Experiment 1 demonstrated that poor readers needed more time for evaluating phonologically incongruent word pairs. No independent effect of orthographic incongruency was found. Experiment 2 showed that, if compared with reading age matched normals, poor readers had more problems with evaluating uppercase-lowercase incongruencies. This orthographic processing problem was particularly prominent when pseudowords were presented. It is concluded that poor readers not only have phonological processing problems, but also have difficulties at the orthographic processing level.     

Manipulating Written Hebrew Roots Across Development: The Interface of Semantic,Phonological and Orthographic Factors

The study examined children and adolescents’ ability to improve root spelling in Hebrew words by paying attention to phonological, semantic and orthographic properties of priming roots. One hundred and fifty 8, 9, 10, 11 and 15-year olds were administered two spelling tests in Hebrew. The same 40 target words were used in both tests, each word containing a root with at least one homophonous letter. Target words were matched one-to-one with 40 priming words containing the same root. The pool of prime-target word pairs was classified into two major groups:Words containing genuine root primes, and words containing false root primes. In the first test, participants had to spell the 40 target words. In the second test they had to spell the same words, each primed by its written genuine or false match. Results showed that unprimed spelling improved with age. Priming – both genuine and false – improved spelling performance significantly, especially in younger grades, but genuine priming was more effective. Spellers were able to overcome phonological opacity in root primes and to take root semantics into account. This finding testifies to the robustness of the root as a unified morphological entity in Hebrew and to children’s ability to make use of their knowledge of lexical and morphological organization in learning to spell.We thank Dominiek Sandra, Harald Baayen and an anonymous reviewer for their important and constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.