lecture 2 - two routes to reading

Question 1

what words does the lexical route allow you to read?

Answer 1

As this mechanism does not rely on the sound of individual letters, it can be used for irregular words, as well as regular words - relies on whole-words recognition

Question 2

what words does the lexical route not allow you to read?

Answer 2

neologisms or unknown words (which do not have yet an entry in the readers mental dictionary).

Question 3

what does the non-lexical route rely on?

Answer 3

Relies on a set of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules to derive pronunciation in an indirect fashion e.g. RIGHT = R-IGH-T = /r-al-t/

Question 4

when does the non-lexical route work?

Answer 4

regular words – e.g. CAVE = /k-el-v/

Question 5

when does the non-lexical route not work?

Answer 5

irregular ones – e.g. HAVE = /h-el-v/

Question 6

what is a phoneme?

Answer 6

distinguishable sounds
The phoneme is the smallest sound difference that reflects a difference in meaning. For instance, the sound /s/ and /v/ are different phonemes in English for sure, because CASE and CAVE have a different meaning.

Question 7

what is a grapheme?

Answer 7

a written symbol that represents a sound
A grapheme refers to the written segment corresponding to phoneme, and it can use one letter (making it simple – e.g. ‘c’ > /k/) or more than one letter (making it complex - ‘c’h > /k/).

Question 8

what happens under time pressure to the two routes?

Answer 8

The two routes are not racing with one another, except when reading under time pressure.
Under time pressure, you may regularize an exception by not recognizing the string as a knowm word (PINT>MINT); you may also mistake a nonword for a work (SARE>CARE).

Question 9

key effects found in both DRC and human readers

Answer 9

1. words read faster than nonwords (‘plane/brope’)
2. high-frequency words read faster than. low frequency words – table/maple.
3. regular words read faster and more accurately than irregular words – mint/ pint – in particular for low-frequency words.
4. the larger the orthographic neighborhood of a nonword, the faster it is read aloud – lat/
5. nonwords that sound like words read faster than nonwords that do not sound like words – brane/grune.
6. the more letters in a nonword there are, the slower it is read aloud; but number of letters has little or no effect on reading aloud real words – neighborhood/ fleargushtove