Is the orthographic/phonological onset a single unit in reading aloud?

Two main theories of visual word recognition have been developed regarding the way orthographic units in printed words map onto phonological units in spoken words. One theory suggests that a string of single letters or letter clusters corresponds to a string of phonemes (Coltheart, 1978; Venezky, 1970), while the other suggests that a string of single letters or letter clusters corresponds to coarser phonological units, for example, onsets and rimes (Treiman & Chafetz, 1987). These theoretical assumptions were critical for the development of coding schemes in prominent computational models of word recognition and reading aloud. In a reading-aloud study, we tested whether the human reading system represents the orthographic/phonological onset of printed words and nonwords as single units or as separate letters/phonemes. Our results, which favored a letter and not an onset-coding scheme, were successfully simulated by the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001). A separate experiment was carried out to further adjudicate between 2 versions of the DRC model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches.

It has often been argued that various facts about skilled reading aloud cannot be explained by any model unless that model possesses a dual-route architecture (lexical and nonlexical routes from print to speech). This broad claim has been challenged by M. S. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland (1989, 1990). Their model has but a single route from print to speech, yet, they contend, it can account for major facts about reading that have hitherto been claimed to require a dual-route architecture. The authors identify 6 of these major facts about reading. The 1-route model proposed by Seidenberg and McClelland can account for the 1st of these but not the remaining 5. Because models with dual-route architectures can explain all 6 of these basic facts about reading, the authors suggest that this remains the viable architecture for any tenable model of skilled reading and learning to read. The dual-route cascaded model, a computational version of the dual-route model, is described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Additive and interactive effects of stimulus degradation: No challenge for CDP+.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 35(2) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2009-02753-020). The URL for the supplemental material was incomplete. The complete URL is http:dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013738.supp.] S. O'Malley and D. Besner (2008) showed that additive effects of stimulus degradation and word frequency in reading aloud occur in the presence of nonwords but not in pure word lists. They argued that this dissociation presents a major challenge to interactive computational models of reading aloud and claimed that no currently implemented model is able to simulate additive effects in these conditions. In the current article, it is shown that the connectionist dual process model (CDP+) can simulate these effects because its nonlexical route is thresholded. The authors present a series of simulations showing that CDP+ can not only simulate the precise dissociation observed by O'Malley and Besner but more generally can produce additive effects for a wide range of parameter combinations and different sets of items. The nonlexical route of CDP+ was not modified post hoc to deal with the effects of stimulus quality, but it had been thresholded for principled reasons before it was known that these effects existed. Together, the effects of stimulus quality on word frequency do not challenge CDP+ but rather provide unexpected support for its architecture and processing dynamics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neighborhood effects in reading aloud: New findings and new challenges for computational models.

A word from a dense neighborhood is often read aloud faster than a word from a sparse neighborhood. This advantage is usually attributed to orthography, but orthographic and phonological neighbors are typically confounded. Two experiments investigated the effect of neighborhood density on reading aloud when phonological density was varied while orthographic density was held constant, and vice versa. A phonological neighborhood effect was observed, but not an orthographic one. These results are inconsistent with the predominant role ascribed to orthographic neighbors in accounts of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Consistent with this interpretation, 6 different computational models of reading aloud failed to simulate this pattern of results. The results of the present experiments thus provide a new understanding of some of the processes underlying reading aloud, and new challenges for computational models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-language computational investigation of the length effect in reading aloud.

The authors examined whether 2 computational models of reading, the dual-route cascaded model (M. Coltheart, K. Rastle, C. Perry, R. Langdon, and J. C. Ziegler, 2001) and the connectionist 2-layer model (M. Zorzi, G. Houghton, and B. Butterworth, 1998), were able to predict the pattern that the length effect found in reading aloud is larger in German than in English (J. C. Ziegler, C. Perry, A. M. Jacobs, and M. Braun, 2001). The results showed that the dual-route cascaded model, which uses a serial mechanism for assembling phonology, successfully predicted this cross-language difference. In contrast, the connectionist model of Zorzi et al. (1998) predicted the opposite: a larger length effect in English than in German. Both the success of one model and the failure of the other highlight fundamental differences between 2 major classes of computational models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Additivity of factor effects in reading tasks is still a challenge for computational models: Reply to Ziegler, Perry, and Zorzi (2009).

J. C. Ziegler, C. Perry, and M. Zorzi (2009) have claimed that their connectionist dual process model (CDP+) can simulate the data reported by S. O'Malley and D. Besner. Most centrally, they have claimed that the model simulates additive effects of stimulus quality and word frequency on the time to read aloud when words and nonwords are randomly intermixed. This work represents an important attempt given that computational models of reading processes have to date largely ignored the issue of whether it is possible to simulate additive effects. Despite CDP+'s success at capturing many other phenomena, it is clear that CDP+ fails to capture the full pattern seen with skilled readers in these experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

“Additive and interactive effects of stimulus degradation: No challenge for CDP+”: Correction to Ziegler et al. (2009).

Reports an error in "Additive and interactive effects of stimulus degradation: No challenge for CDP+" by Johannes C. Ziegler, Conrad Perry and Marco Zorzi (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2009[Jan], Vol 35[1], 306-311). The URL for the supplemental material was incomplete. The complete URL is http:dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0013738.supp. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2008-18581-023.) S. O'Malley and D. Besner (2008) showed that additive effects of stimulus degradation and word frequency in reading aloud occur in the presence of nonwords but not in pure word lists. They argued that this dissociation presents a major challenge to interactive computational models of reading aloud and claimed that no currently implemented model is able to simulate additive effects in these conditions. In the current article, it is shown that the connectionist dual process model (CDP+) can simulate these effects because its nonlexical route is thresholded. The authors present a series of simulations showing that CDP+ can not only simulate the precise dissociation observed by O'Malley and Besner but more generally can produce additive effects for a wide range of parameter combinations and different sets of items. The nonlexical route of CDP+ was not modified post hoc to deal with the effects of stimulus quality, but it had been thresholded for principled reasons before it was known that these effects existed. Together, the effects of stimulus quality on word frequency do not challenge CDP+ but rather provide unexpected support for its architecture and processing dynamics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading lexically without semantics: evidence from patients with probable Alzheimer's disease

Recent modifications of the lexical model of oral reading make the prediction that under conditions where sublexical reading processes alone cannot achieve the target pronunciation (i.e., when words have exceptional spellings or when sublexical processes are impaired), patients with severe semantic impairment should have more difficulty reading aloud semantically impaired words than semantically retained words. In a battery of lexical-semantic and reading tasks, two neurologically normal control subjects and two subjects with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and only moderate semantic impairment read aloud all words accurately. One AD subject with severe semantic impairment was impaired in word reading but demonstrated no difference in reading words with regular and exceptional spellings. Another AD subject with severe semantic impairment read aloud without error virtually all regular and exception words. Neither severely impaired AD subject demonstrated any relationship between oral reading accuracy and semantic knowledge of exception words. These findings support a model of word reading incorporating lexical, nonsemantic processes by which lexical orthographic input representations directly activate lexical phonological output representations without the necessity of semantic mediation.     

Phonological neighbors influence word naming through the least supported phoneme.

Recent research has shown that phonological neighborhood density facilitates naming latencies. In an attempt to extend this work, the authors evaluated the effect of phonological neighborhood distribution by comparing responding to words that consisted of 3 phonemes but differed in the number of phoneme positions that could be changed to form a neighbor (i.e., 2 vs. 3 positions). The results revealed that words in which all 3 positions could be changed to form a neighbor were named more rapidly than were words in which only 2 positions could be changed. The results show that this effect occurs due to a difference between the 2 groups of words in terms of their least supported phoneme (i.e., the phoneme position within a word with which the fewest neighbors overlap). The authors show that differences in terms of the number of neighbors for the least supported phoneme can also explain past research that indicates an effect of phonological neighborhood density on naming. The authors explain the results of this research using the dual-route cascaded model of reading aloud. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociation between two forms of conceptual priming in Alzheimer's disease.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy control participants performed 2 conceptual repetition priming tasks, word-associate production and category -exemplar production. Both tasks had identical study-phases of reading target words aloud, had the most common responses as target items, and required production of a single response. Patients with AD showed normal priming on word-associate production but impaired priming on category-exemplar production. This dissociation in AD suggests that conceptual priming is not a unitary form of memory but rather is mediated by separable memory systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparison of reading and spelling in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease.

Patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) are reported to show mild, but reliable, difficulties reading aloud and spelling to dictation exception words, which have unusual or unpredictable correspondence between their spelling and pronunciation (e.g., touch). To understand the cognitive dysfunction responsible for these impairments, 21 patients and 27 age- and education-matched controls completed specially designed tests of single-word oral reading and spelling to dictation. AD patients performed slightly below controls on all tasks and showed mildly exaggerated regularity effects (i.e., the difference in response accuracy between words with regular spellings minus exception words) in reading and spelling. Qualitative analyses, however, did not demonstrate response patterns consistent with impairment in central lexical orthographic processing. The authors conclude that the mild alexia and agraphia in AD reflect semantic deficits and nonlinguistic impairments rather than a specific disturbance in lexical orthographic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of reading purpose on inference generation and comprehension in reading.

There are variations in the extent to which particular types of inferences or activations are made during reading (G. McKoon & R. Ratcliff, 1992; M. Singer, 1994). In this study, the authors investigated the influence of reading purpose (for entertainment or study) on inference generation. Participants read 2 texts aloud and 2 texts for comprehension measures. Reading purpose did not influence off-line behavior (comprehension) but did influence on-line reader behavior (thinking aloud). Readers with a study purpose more often repeated the text, acknowledged a lack of background knowledge, and evaluated the text content and writing than did readers with an entertainment purpose. This pattern was stronger for the expository text than for the narrative text. Reading purpose, and possibly text type, affects the kinds of inferences that readers generate. Hence, inferential activities are at least partially under the reader's strategic control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints on general slowing: a meta-analysis using hierarchical linear models with random coefficients

General slowing (GS) theories are often tested by meta-analysis that model mean latencies of older adults as a function of mean latencies of younger adults. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is inappropriate for this purpose because it fails to account for the nested structure of multitask response time (RT) data. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) are an alternative method for analyzing such data. OLS analysis of data from 21 studies that used iterative cognitive tasks supported GS; however, HLM analysis demonstrated significant variance in slowing across experimental tasks and a process-specific effect by showing less slowing for memory scanning than for visual-search and mental-rotation tasks. The authors conclude that HLM is more suitable than OLS methods for meta-analyses of RT data and for testing GS theories.     

Serial processing in reading aloud: Reply to Zorzi (2000).

K. Rastle and M. Coltheart (1999; see also M. Coltheart & K. Rastle, 1994) reported data demonstrating that the cost of irregularity in reading aloud low-frequency exception words is modulated by the position of the irregularity in the word. They argued that these data implicated a serial process and falsified all models of reading aloud that operate solely in parallel, a conclusion that M. Zorzi (2000) challenged by successfully simulating the position of irregularity effect with such a model. Zorzi (2000) further claimed that a reanalysis of K. Rastle and A Coltheart's (1999) data demonstrates sensitivity to grapheme-phoneme consistency (which he claimed was confounded across the position of irregularity manipulation) rather than the use of a serial process. Here, the authors argue that M. Zorzi's (2000) reanalyses were inappropriate and reassert that K. Rastle and A Coltheart's (1999) findings are evidence for serial processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of global versus local processing styles on assimilation versus contrast in social judgment.

The authors propose a global/local processing style model (GLOMO) for assimilation and contrast effects in social judgment. GLOMO is based on Schwarz and Bless' (1992, 2007) inclusion-exclusion model, which suggests that when information is included into a category, assimilation occurs, whereas when information is excluded from a category, contrast occurs. According to GLOMO, inclusion versus exclusion should be influenced by whether people process information globally or locally. In 5 experiments, using both disambiguation and social comparison, the authors induced local versus global processing through perceptual tasks and time perspective and showed that global processing produced assimilation, whereas local processing produced contrast. The experiments showed that processing styles elicited in one task can carry over to other tasks and influence social judgments. Furthermore, they found that hemisphere activation and accessibility of judgment-consistent knowledge partially mediated these effects. Implications for current and classic models of social judgment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading of lexically stressed words by Italian aphasic patients: A retrospective study.

This retrospective study investigated whether there is evidence of a 3rd reading mechanism in a transparent orthography such as Italian, where (nearly) all words can be read through the sublexical route but stress cannot always be assigned by orthography-to-phonology rules. The presence and frequency of stress errors in lexically stressed words in 16 aphasic patients with impaired reading comprehension of those same words was checked. Nine patients were reexamined months later. Notwithstanding impaired reading comprehension, none of the patients made stress errors at first examination. At follow-up, all patients showed improvement of reading comprehension and only 2 patients still had better preserved oral reading. The authors concluded that even in transparent orthographies such as Italian, the noninteractive dual-route model is inadequate for explaining all patterns of reading performances. In nonprogressive aphasias, reading comprehension can recover in a large number of patients, reducing the amplitude of the dissociation between reading aloud and reading comprehension and reducing the number of patients showing this dissociation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Serial processing in reading aloud: Evidence for dual-route models of reading.

The authors examined the regularity effect on reading aloud as a function of left-to-right phonemic position of irregularity in low-frequency exception words. Ss named 96 low-frequency exception words categorized into 5 conditions on the basis of the position (1st through 5th) of their 1st irregular grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence (GPC). Latencies and error rates for these words were compared with the rates for 96 matched GPC regular controls. Results showed that the cost of irregularity decreased monotonically over the 5 positions of irregularity. This result is offered as evidence for dual-route models of reading and against parallel distributed processing models of reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the association between connectionism and data: Are a few words necessary?

Parallel distributed processing (PDP) models represent a new and exciting approach to the study of visual word recognition in reading. M. S. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland's (see record 1990-03520-001) model is examined because the strongest and widest claims for the viability of a connectionist account of visual word recognition have been made on the basis of their model. The current implemented version of their model fails to account for important facts concerning how human subjects read aloud and carry out lexical decisions, despite the fact that these tasks are central to the performance domain that the model purports to explain. The incorporation of multiple routines and an explicit lexical level of representation into the model may help resolve some of the difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Levels of selective attention revealed through analyses of response time distributions.

The present research examines the nature of the interference effects in a number of selective attention tasks. All of these tasks result in interference in performance by presenting information that is irrelevant to task performance but competes for selection. The interference from this competing information slows the response time (RT) of participants relative to a condition where the competition is minimized. The authors use a convolution of an exponential and a Gaussian (ex-Gaussian) distribution to examine the influence of interference on the characteristics of RT distributions. Consistent with previous research, the authors show that interference in the Stroop task is reflected by both the Gaussian and exponential portions of the ex-Gaussian. In contrast, in 4 experiments they show that several other interference tasks evidence interference that is reflected only in the Gaussian portion of the ex-Gaussian distribution. The authors suggest that these differences reflect the operation of different selection mechanisms, and they examine how sequential sampling models accommodate these effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)