Development and individual differences in reading Flashcards
What is a key difference between skilled and beginner readers?
Skilled readers show shorter fixations and fewer re-fixations and regressions
How did Rayner investigate reading behaviour comparing adults and children?
Using the moving window technique (estimation of perceptual span), adults were found to have larger perceptual spans, made shorter and fewer fixations
Beginner readers showed shorter saccades (explainable using the smaller perceptual span)
How do we learn to read?
The first way we learn language is through hearing it, so when we learn to read we have to associate the visual stimuli we see with the words we already know by sound
In alphabetic languages such as English the orthographic form of letters is associated with a phoneme
Why is learning the association between letters and sounds difficult in English?
Inconsistent letter-sound mapping
Consonant sounds vary depending on neighbouring vowels, and vowels themselves are not uniquely coded - the same vowel can have multiple different sounds, but the same vowel sound can also have multiple orthographic representations which have different meanings e.g. paws and pause
How do we label languages such as English?
We say it has ORTHOGRAPHIC DEPTH i.e. multiple inconsistencies between spelling and sound
Languages such as Finnish have shallow orthography i.e. more consistent mapping and easier for beginner readers to “sound out” new words
Inconsistencies in languages such as English have to be dealt with using separate rules
What is meant by the Whole Word method for teaching children to read?
Learning whole words by being shown spelling of it, hear the word aloud and then repeat
When this is done multiple times, learning should occur
Unknown words are encouraged to be guessed using context but sounding out unknown words is not encouraged
What are 3 arguments for the whole word learning method?
1) Irregularity of English favours reading words as their wholes rather than trying to understand component parts
2) Promotes reading for meaning
3) Can be a fun way to learn to read - engaging stories, encouraged to write own stories
What is an argument against the whole word method?
Irregularities in words could benefit from being sounded out
What is the basis of the phonics method?
Children learn the relationship between printed letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) using consistent examples
New words are encouraged to be sounded out in order to match letters with the word they already know by sound
Evaluate the phonics method
Criticised for being a boring way of learning
However the capacity to learn new words by sounding them out may also be rewarding, and equips children with an attitude to just give things a go
RECAP: What was Coltheart et al’s Dual Route model of word recognition?
Involved specific coding of letter position, and recognition of words using phonology
Letters and their position in a word are identified and in addition to lexical and semantic access, we see grapheme-phoneme conversion
How did Van Ordern investigate phonology during silent reading?
Participants conducted a semantic categorisation task in which they made category judgements for stimuli to words which were homophones of a correct word
For example - asked “is it a flower” and presented with “rows”
Looked at response time to press no
Was suggested that automatic phonological processing during silent reading was modulating reading time
What were the two conclusions drawn by Rayner et al?
1) Mastering the alphabetic principle is essential to learning to read
2) Instructional (phonetic) techniques are more effective than those which don’t emphasise the alphabetic principles
What did Just, Carpenter and Masson find in their speed reading experiments?
Using eye tracking, found “speed-readers” read almost 3 times as fast as normal (~600-700 wpm)
At this speed, normal readers are simply “skimming”
At the end of the day, however, faster reading is only achievable through fewer fixations which then means less visual information being processed accurately. The resulting comprehension of having read and understood the text occurs through action of the brain filling the gaps
Speed readers found to be able to answer general questions about what they read but nothing detailed
Speed reading is only good for gist, not understanding
What did Rayner suggest about people with dyslexia?
Similar to beginner readers i.e. longer fixations, more fixations, shorter saccades
Suggested oculomotor problems may be a potential contributor to the condition, and as such could be used diagnostically
However it is more likely that the longer fixations etc are due to general processing difficulty rather than anything to do with eye movement mechanisms themselves
