Language and reading 1

Question 1

What 3 methods can be used to study word recognition?

Answer 1

-Eye tracking
-Lexical decision task
-Naming task

Question 2

Describe the use of eye tracking

Answer 2

-Measuring how long people spend looking at a word whilst ready it but monitoring eye movements
-Individual typically reads words off a computer screen and a camera will monitor what words they are observing
-Can tell us how long was spent looking at a word, whether any words were looked back upon and whether words are skipped
-If spent barely any time looking at a word = suggests word recognition was easy

Question 3

Describe the use of a lexical decision task

Answer 3

-Measuring how long it takes for people to distinguish whether a group of letters is a word or not
-Shown series of letters on computer screen and asked to choose ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to if they are a word or not
-Can be used alongside priming - ppts primed with stimulus before doing task
-Longer they take to respond = more difficult word recognition

Question 4

What did Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) find?

Answer 4

-Ppts responded faster and more accurately when words are semantically related e.g. doctor and nurse

Question 5

Describe the use of a naming task

Answer 5

-Measuring how long it takes for someone to start saying a word after seeing it
-Being presented with a word on a computer screen and told to say the word as quickly as they can, without stuttering or saying it wrong

Question 6

What 3 factors affect word recognition?

Answer 6

-Word frequency
-Predictability
-Neighbourhood effects

Question 7

How can word frequency have an impact on word recognition? Give a study example

Answer 7

-Words that are more commonly used are recognised more than infrequent words
-Schilling et al. (1998) conducted a naming task, lexical decision task and an eye tracking task to look at speed of recognition of words
-Low frequency words e.g. armadillo took longer to recognise than high frequency words e.g. teacher shown by all 3 tasks

Question 8

How can predictability have an impact on word recognition? Give a study example

Answer 8

-Words that are predictable are recognised easier than ones that are misleading
-Tulving and Gold (1963) made ppts read and incomplete sentence e.g. “the skiers were buried alive by a sudden…”
-Had two options to choose from to complete the sentence e.g. “ avalanche” which is predictable and “ inflation” which is misleading
-Results found that if the word was relevant to the context then word recognition was easier

Question 9

How can neighbourhood effects have an impact on word recognition? Give a study example

Answer 9

-If similar words exist then word recognition may be quicker
-They may look like the word that is trying to be recognised or sound like it
-Orthographic neighbourhood effects - how the words look e.g. ‘task’ ‘tank ‘rank’
-Andrews (1989,1992) found low frequency words are easier to recognise
-Phonological neighbourhood effects - how words sound e.g. ‘bait’ ‘gate’
-Yates (2005) found that words that have lots of phonological neighbours have quicker word recognition

Question 10

What are the 5 theories of word recognition?

Answer 10

-Morton’s Logogen model
-Word superiority effect (Reicher, 1969 and Wheeler, 1970)
-Interactive Activation model (McClelland and Rumelhart, 1981,1982)
-Transposed letter priming
-Dual route model (Coltheart et al. 2001)

Question 11

REFER BACK TO DOCS FOR IMAGES ON MODELS

Answer 11

REFER BACK TO DOCS FOR IMAGES ON MODELS

Question 12

Describe Morton’s logogen model

Answer 12

-Based on idea that perceivers have a large amount of specialised recognition units, that each have the ability to recognise a word
-These are called logogens, and you have these on every word you know
-Contain info on sound of the word, semantic meaning

Question 13

How are logogens activated?

Answer 13

-They all have different activation levels
-As soon as this level is exceeded, the logogen fires and so the meaning is recognised
-Can be activated by either auditory or visual analysis

Question 14

How can this model explain different effects?

Answer 14

-Word frequency - high frequency words have lower activation levels compared to high frequency word
-Predictability effect - if a word is predictable then the info needed for word decreases, and so is easier to activate the logogen

Question 15

Describe the word superiority effect?

Answer 15

-Ppts are presented with a stimulus (masked) and then they have to make a choice about which letter was seen in a particular position
-Results found 10% improvement in performance when the whole word was shown rather than just the single letter
-Easier to recognise a letter in context of a word rather than letter being in isolation

Question 16

Describe the interactive activation model

Answer 16

-Helps to explain word superiority effect
-Has 3 detector levels: feature detectors, letter detectors and word detectors
-Feature detector includes lines and shapes that make up a letter
-Letter detector are the letters that contain activated features
-Word detectors are the entire word which contains all the letters
-Inhibitory and excitatory connections that run in both directions so consistency

Question 17

What is a disadvantage of the interactive activation model

Answer 17

-‘Slot coding system’
-If any letters are slightly out of place it wouldn’t be recognised e.g. the word being spelt incorrectly

Question 18

Describe transposed letter priming

Answer 18

-Each letter is assigned a specific channel, and is then further processed to a different independent channel
-According to IAM (^), words that have 2 letters which are switched should be just as difficult to recognise as words that have incorrect letters in them e.g. jugde and jupte

Question 19

Describe the dual route model

Answer 19

-2 routes on how a word can be read out
-Direct route that directly connects the word to it’s meaning
-This route tends to be higher frequency or familiar words, meaning the reader can access the word and pronounce it easily
-Phonological route is indirect and is where you convert graphemes into phenomes meaning you literally spell words out you don’t understand e.g. ‘m’‘a’‘n’

Question 20

What disorder can this model help with?

Answer 20

-Provides an explanation for dyslexia, as one if the routes may not develop properly
-Developmental Phonological dyslexia is when there is difficulty reading non words or words that make no sense e.g. giph as the route is impaired
-Developmental Surface dyslexia can cause problems with irregular words such as yacht as the direct route is impaired and so the phonological route cases things to be said incorrectly