7. Reading Flashcards
Reading to children 6-7 times per week
12 months advanced in their reading skills
1970 British cohort study
Found that children who read regularly for pleasure had greater intellectual progress in literacy and mathematics
Followed up age 42, still have significantly better vocab test
Word identification
Automatic
Not every word is fixated
Series of fixations and saccades
Some evidence that it is unavoidable (stroop effect- suggests hat word meaning is extracted even when people try to not process it)
Studied via eye movements and tracking and response times as it is automatic it cannot be studies using introspective reports
Eye movements in reading
Saccades 25/60 ms
Fixations 200-250ms (only 4-5 letters around the fixation point are seen with 100% acuity)
Information is taken in during fixations, less in saccades
EZ reader model
1) familiarity check : do I know it? Depends of frequency. Completion when eye movement moves to next word
2) lexical access : identify the orthographic pattern and semantics- recognise the word.
Faster for common and predictable words due to organisation of mental lexicon
CRUCIAL ASSUMPTION
next eye movement is programmed after PARTIAL processing of the current word
We can attend to two words at the same time… It works in a SERIAL fashion
Factors altering difficulty of word recognition…
Frequency- high frequency words are processed faster
Length- short words processed faster
Regularity- regular words are processed faster (closer graphaeme-phoneme conversion)
Models of reading aloud
DRC- dual route cascaded model
Connectionist Model
What must a good reading aloud model do?
Explain : Regular vs irregular words New words and non words Dyslexia All the factors that make it easier and harder It's development in children
Dual route cascaded model
Coltheart et al 2001
Both silent and reading aloud, accounts for reading all kinds of words, explains dyslexia.
2 routes from print to sound:
INDIRECT (non lexical) - serial conversion of letter to sounds one at a time. Grahame- phoneme conversion
DIRECT (lexical) - parallel. Divided into 2 sub routes: one with just orthographic lexicon and the other also involving semantics
Cascaded as activation is passed on to the next level before the first is complete
The direct route may be used more when dealing with short familiar words because it is faster
Positive DRC evaluation points
Explains reading let to right
Explains dyslexia
Works for other languages
Negative evaluation of DRC model
No explanation for how it is acquired
Downplays phonological processing
Mechanism of how semantics affect the process is not clear
Connectionist (single route) model
Plaut et al 1996
Parallel
Activation of ORTHOGRAPHIC, SEMANTIC, PHONOLOGICAL codes
Feedback connections
No grapheme-phoneme conversion
Positive evaluation of connectionist model
Simulated word length effects etc
Explains some dyslexia
Assumes semantic importance in reading
Negative evaluation of connectionist model
Similar to DRC, does not explain how semantics are involved
Learning process doesn’t correspond to how children learn to read (DRC doesn’t even attempt to explain it )
Cannot explain findings that reading occurs in serial manner (this is explained by the DRC)
Surface dyslexia
Issues extracting meaning from visual form
Problems with irregular words
Phonetically correct spelling errors
Confuse homophones
Seem to read by grapheme-phoneme conversion rules (supported by the indirect DRC route)
