Little Frog and Toad: Interaction of orthography and phonology in Polish spelling

The interaction of lexical and non-lexicalprocesses in spelling was investigated throughlexical priming of non-lexical spelling, inPolish, a language in whose relativelytransparent orthography lexical informationmight be expected to play a less influentialrole than in English. Orthographic choice fornonwords was assessed under free and primedspelling conditions for both adults andchildren using direct and associative priming.The findings indicated that lexical orthographyinfluences resolution of nonlexical phonologyin spelling and identified two sources ofinfluence: one in unprimed spelling, wherelong-standing orthographic knowledge affectednonword orthographic choice so that it was notdetermined solely by phonology, the other inprimed spelling, where orthographic solutionsto nonwords were influenced by the covertorthography of the prime. The most powerfulevidence for lexical influence comes from thefinding that lexical orthography not onlyinforms resolution of phonology in cases ofambiguity, but overrides phonology whenresolution is unambiguous.     

Does exposure to orthography affect children's spelling accuracy?

It has previously been reported that exposure to visually presented correctly and incorrectly spelled words has a significant effect on subsequent spelling accuracy. Previous research investigating this process in skilled adult readers has shown very robust effects that encountering a misspelling has a detrimental effect on spelling accuracy whereas encountering a correct spelling has a beneficial effect. This effect is considered to be mediated via an implicit priming mechanism. In the current study, children with a mean age of 10 years were tested using a similar procedure to the experiments with adults but the results revealed a qualitatively different pattern. Children showed a significant beneficial effect following presentation of a correct spelling but no measurable effect of encountering a misspelling on subsequent spelling accuracy. The fact that children's spelling output was also found to be affected by depth of encoding at the point of presentation points towards an explanation of children using explicit rather than implicit processing of prior information.     

Is it misspelled or is it mispelled? The influence of fresh orthographic information on spelling

The effect of exposure to incorrectly and correctly spelled words on subsequent spelling performance was examined as a function of spelling proficiency and of time lapse between exposure and test. Spelling accuracy was found to be respectively depressed and enhanced by such exposure, relative to performance on unexposed control words. The effect was persistent and pervasive, obtaining at both immediate and one-week delayed testing and in both good and poor spellers. The findings indicate that fresh orthographic information exerts an influence on pre-existing abstract orthographic representations, rather than establishing new episodic traces, and that this process takes place implicitly.     

Exploring the dynamics of novelty production through exaptation: a historical analysis of coal tar-based innovations

Theories of technological change fail to account for innovation stemming from affordances of previously developed artefacts.  The literature has highlighted that novelty can originate from market needs, from inferences made from scientific theories or be the object of deliberate technology projects in technology-push models. More recently, scholars have suggested that exaptation, defined as the co-option of artefacts for new functions, may constitute a different path to novelty production. However, the link between the existing artefact and the genesis of new functions driving exaptation is underexplored. Through a longitudinal case study of instances of emergence of new technologies stemming from a single compound, coal tar, we show that exaptation plays a role in all novelty production and, in some cases, it is its main determinant. We build a model of exaptive novelty production that captures the interactions between secondary effects of existing technology, affordances, functionalities, and the emergence of new functions. Our model enriches the theory of innovation by integrating both serendipitous and planned processes as well as both artefactual characteristics and human intentionality.