Phonological recoding in reading for meaning by adults and children.

Phonological recoding in reading has been studied by requiring adults or children to judge whether printed sentences are correct or not. When some sentences are orthographically unacceptable but phonologically acceptable (e.g., The girl through the ball), both children and adults make abnormally many false positives with such sentences. It is unclear whether the phonological recoding that produces this effect is attributable to assembled (nonlexical) or addressed (lexical) phonology. Two types of phonologically acceptable but orthographically unacceptable sentences were devised: Those in which the crucial item ("through" in the above example) was an irregular word (so that its phonology could only be obtained lexically), and those in which the crucial item was a homophonic nonword (so that its phonology could only be obtained by assembled phonology). Both types of sentence produced significantly high false-positive rates for adult readers and children, indicating the use of assembled and addressed phonology during sentence reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imageability effects in word naming: An individual differences analysis.

The present research was designed to extend research by Strain et al (1995) who found that imageability facilitates naming of low-frequency irregular words. The authors hypothesized that the impact of imageability on naming performance will vary with phonological reading ability. For participants who score high in phonological reading ability, the effect of imageability should be seen primarily on naming of low-frequency exception words where the orthography-to-phonology mappings are not strong. For participants who score low in phonological reading ability, the mapping of orthography onto phonology is presumably inefficient for all types of low-frequency words. Accordingly, for these participants, it was predicted that imageability would affect naming of both exception and regular words. 90 college students served as Ss. Exp 1 shows that the impact of imageability on word naming varies with phonological coding skill. In Exp 2, the effect of imageability on naming low-frequency irregular words was shown to occur across an extended set of items. Together, the present findings support the notion that semantics may play a role in phonological coding when the mappings between orthography and phonology are weak. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cognitive profile and multiple-deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia.

The present study was conducted to examine the cognitive profile and multiple-deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Thirty Chinese dyslexic children in Hong Kong were compared with 30 average readers of the same chronological age (CA controls) and 30 average readers of the same reading level (RL controls) in a number of rapid naming, visual, phonological, and orthographic tasks. Chinese dyslexic children performed significantly worse than the CA controls but similarly to the RL controls on most of the cognitive tasks. The rapid naming deficit was found to be the most dominant type of cognitive deficit in Chinese dyslexic children. Over half of the dyslexic children exhibited deficits in 3 or more cognitive areas, and there was a significant association between the number of cognitive deficits and the degree of reading and spelling impairment. The present findings support the multiple-deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of word reading fluency and spelling in a consistent orthography: An 8-year follow-up.

In a longitudinal study, development of word reading fluency and spelling were followed for almost 8 years. In a group of 115 students (65 girls, 50 boys) acquiring the phonologically transparent German orthography, prediction measures (letter knowledge, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and nonverbal IQ) were assessed at the beginning of Grade 1; reading fluency and spelling were tested at the end of Grade 1 as well as in Grades 4 and 8. Reading accuracy was close to ceiling in all reading assessments, such that reading fluency was not heavily influenced by differences in reading accuracy. High stability was observed for word reading fluency development. Of the dysfluent readers in Grade 1, 70% were still poor readers in Grade 8. For spelling, children who at the end of Grade 1 still had problems translating spoken words into phonologically plausible letter sequences developed problems with orthographic spelling later on. The strongest specific predictors were rapid automatized naming for reading fluency and phonological awareness for spelling. Word recognition speed was a relevant and highly stable indicator of reading skills and the only indicator that discriminated reading skill levels in consistent orthographies. Its long-term development was more strongly influenced by early naming speed than by phonological awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains.

A connectionist approach to processing in quasi-regular domains, as exemplified by English word reading, is developed. Networks using appropriately structured orthographic and phonological representations were trained to read both regular and exception words, and yet were also able to read pronounceable nonwords as well as skilled readers. A mathematical analysis of a simplified system clarifies the close relationship of word frequency and spelling–sound consistency in influencing naming latencies. These insights were verified in subsequent simulations, including an attractor network that accounted for latency data directly in its time to settle on a response. Further analyses of the ability of networks to reproduce data on acquired surface dyslexia support a view of the reading system that incorporates a graded division of labor between semantic and phonological processes, and contrasts in important ways with the standard dual-route account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year longitudinal study.

Relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading skills were examined in a longitudinal correlational study of 216 children. Phonological processing abilities, word-level reading skills, and vocabulary were assessed annually from kindergarten through 4th grade, as the children developed from beginning to skilled readers. Individual differences in phonological awareness were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading for every time period examined. Individual differences in serial naming and vocabulary were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading initially, but these relations faded with development. Individual differences in letter-name knowledge were related to subsequent individual differences in phonological awareness and serial naming, but there were no relations between individual differences in word level reading and any subsequent phonological processing ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological computation and missing vowels: Mapping lexical involvement in reading.

The role of assembled versus addressed phonology in reading was investigated by examining the size of the minimal phonological unit that is recovered in the reading process. Readers named words in unpointed Hebrew that had many or few missing vowels in their printed forms. Naming latencies were monotonically related to the number of missing vowels. Missing vowels had no effects on lexical decision latencies. These results support a strong phonological model of naming and suggest that even in deep orthographies, phonology is not retrieved from the mental lexicon as a holistic lexical unit but is initially computed by applying letter-to-phoneme computation rules. The partial phonological representation is shaped and completed through top–down activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness.

Investigated the factors influencing the English word identification performance of Spanish-speaking beginning readers. Beginning readers were administered tests of letter naming, Spanish phonological awareness, Spanish and English word recognition, and Spanish and English oral proficiency. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that the readers' performance on English word and pseudoword recognition tests was predicted by the levels of both Spanish phonological awareness and Spanish word recognition, thus indicating cross-language transfer. In contrast, neither English nor Spanish oral proficiency affected word-identification performance. Results suggest a specific way in which 1st-language learning and experience can aid children in the beginning stages of reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modulation of word-reading processes in task switching.

The authors examined modulation of the simple act of word naming induced by the conflict arising when that task competes with color naming in a task-switching paradigm. Subjects alternated between naming a word printed in black and naming the color of a stimulus in 2 conditions. In the incongruent condition, the colored stimulus was an irrelevant word generating conflict, and in the neutral condition, color was carried by a row of asterisks. Subjects took substantially longer to name a word printed in black in the incongruent condition, implying a form of suppression. This modulation of the word-naming response was adaptive in that it led to more efficient color naming. The modulation effect was replicated using phoneme detection instead of word naming but not with lexical decision or visual comparison, implicating a phonological encoding process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Persistence of dyslexics' phonological awareness deficits.

Examined the phonological awareness skills of dyslexic children, adults with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia, and good readers at various age levels. Comparisons of the dyslexics to good readers of the same age or the same reading level indicated that dyslexics do not acquire appropriate levels of phoneme awareness, regardless of their age or reading levels, although they eventually acquire appropriate levels of onset-rhyme awareness. Even adults with fairly high levels of word recognition skill show phoneme awareness deficits. For normal readers, reliable increases in phoneme awareness were associated with age and reading level, whereas for dyslexic Ss these associations were not reliable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquisition of word identification skills in normal and disabled readers.

10 normal and 10 disabled readers in Grades 5 and 6 were required to learn the meaning and pronunciation of unfamiliar words varying in word length and in letter–sound regularity and complexity. Results show that disabled readers were slower to name the unfamiliar words than normal readers, even after 3 sessions of practice. Naming accuracy and latency were found to be more strongly related to both regularity and complexity for disabled readers than for normal readers across 3 test sessions, suggesting that disabled readers were capable of using regular letter–sound correspondences to pronounce printed words but were hampered by weaker knowledge of these correspondences. Performance by both groups on a delayed naming task showed that the differences in naming speed were due to decoding rather than response-execution processes. The effects of word length on naming latency were more pronounced for disabled readers, suggesting that they relied on smaller subword components than normal readers when decoding the stimulus words. Disabled readers were slower at word naming than normal readers in all conditions, suggesting phonological coding and retrieval deficits. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A connectionist multiple-trace memory model for polysyllabic word reading

A connectionist feedforward network implementing a mapping from orthography to phonology is described. The model develops a view of the reading system that accounts for both irregular word and pseudoword reading without relying on any system of explicit or implicit conversion rules. The model assumes, however, that reading is supported by 2 procedures that work successively: a global procedure using knowledge about entire words and an analytic procedure based on the activation of word syllabic segments. The model provides an account of the basic effects that characterize human skilled reading performance including a frequency by consistency interaction and a position-of-irregularity effect. Furthermore, early in training, the network shows a performance similar to that of less skilled readers. It also offers a plausible account of the patterns of acquired phonological and surface dyslexia when lesioned in different ways.     

Understanding chinese developmental dyslexia: Morphological awareness as a core cognitive construct.

Tasks representing 9 cognitive constructs of potential importance to understanding Chinese reading development and impairment were administered to 75 children with dyslexia and 77 age-matched children without reading difficulties in 5th and 6th grade. Logistic regression analyses revealed that dyslexic readers were best distinguished from age-matched controls with tasks of morphological awareness, speeded number naming, and vocabulary skill; performance on tasks of visual skills or phonological awareness failed to distinguish the groups. Path analyses further revealed that a construct of morphological awareness was the strongest consistent predictor of a variety of literacy-related skills across both groups. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may be a core theoretical construct necessary for explaining variability in reading Chinese. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between P-glycoprotein expression and cyclosporin A in kidney. An immunohistological and cell culture study

The role of assembled versus addressed phonology in reading was investigated by examining the size of the minimal phonological unit that is recovered in the reading process. Readers named words in unpointed Hebrew that had many or few missing vowels in their printed forms. Naming latencies were monotonically related to the number of missing vowels. Missing vowels had no effects on lexical decision latencies. These results support a strong phonological model of naming and suggest that even in deep orthographies, phonology is not retrieved from the mental lexicon as a holistic lexical unit but is initially computed by applying letter-to-phoneme computation rules. The partial phonological representation is shaped and completed through top-down activation.     

Vowel Duration Affects Visual Word Identification: Evidence That the Mediating Phonology Is Phonetically Informed.

What form is the lexical phonology that gives rise to phonological effects in visual lexical decision? The authors explored the hypothesis that beyond phonological contrasts the physical phonetic details of words are included. Three experiments using lexical decision and 1 using naming compared processing times for printed words (e.g., plead and pleat) that differ, when spoken, in vowel length and overall duration. Latencies were longer for long-vowel words than for short-vowel words in lexical decision but not in naming. Further, lexical decision on long-vowel words benefited more from identity priming than lexical decision on short-vowel words, suggesting that representations of long-vowel words achieve activation thresholds more slowly. The discussion focused on phonetically informed phonologies, particularly gestural phonology and its potential for understanding reading acquisition and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of specific deficits: Evidence of transfer in disabled and normal readers following oral-motor awareness training.

In an analysis of training procedures designed to address specific phonological deficits in disabled readers, 24 6- to 8-year-olds (reading disabled, age-matched controls, reading-level-matched controls) participated in both a reading and music acquisition paradigm. Children received instruction in grapheme-articulation and symbol-note correspondence patterns and, in the reading task, were taught to connect printed letter clusters with underlying oral-motor activity. Posttest results revealed that all groups of children were successful in the music task and in transferring sublexical segments representing trained reading rules, but disabled and young, normal readers were less able to read complete real and nonsense words. Disabled readers who demonstrated deficits specific to word identification learning revealed their ability to profit from rule-based instruction in symbol-to-note correspondence patterns and print-to-articulation relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation Between Naming and Literacy in Children With Word-Finding Difficulties.

Difficulties with picture naming tasks are associated with literacy problems. When given naming tasks, children with dyslexia are slower to produce words and have a higher proportion of errors (M. Wolf & P. G. Bowers, 1999). However, little is known about the relation between literacy and naming in other populations. This study investigated this relation in 20 children (age 6 years 6 months to 7 years 11 months) with word-finding difficulties. The children in the sample performed very poorly on assessments of naming, but unlike children with dyslexia, they were found to have decoding and spelling abilities within the normal range. In addition, their abilities on phonological awareness tasks were at a similar level to their decoding abilities. In contrast, their performance on reading comprehension and language comprehension measures was significantly worse than their performance on decoding, spelling, and rhyme awareness measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of word decoding and reading fluency across languages varying in orthographic consistency.

Very few studies have directly compared reading acquisition across different orthographies. The authors examined the concurrent and longitudinal predictors of word decoding and reading fluency in children learning to read in an orthographically inconsistent language (English) and in an orthographically consistent language (Greek). One hundred ten English-speaking children and 70 Greek-speaking children attending Grade 1 were examined in measures of phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming speed, orthographic processing, word decoding, and reading fluency. The same children were reassessed on word decoding and reading fluency measures when they were in Grade 2. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that both phonological and orthographic processing contributed uniquely to reading ability in Grades 1 and 2. However, the importance of these predictors was different in the two languages, particularly with respect to their effect on word decoding. The authors argue that the orthography that children are learning to read is an important factor that needs to be taken into account when models of reading development are being generalized across languages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)