W6: Written language Flashcards
Do all cultures have written language?
No - all have spoken language but not all have written language
Written language has…
Changed the course of human history
Allowed facts to be recorded
How did written language arise?
Textbook: writing arose independently in several areas
Other evidence: was invented in only 1-2 places but once known, it was spread around the globe
Why is written language considered secondary to spoken language?
Brains are hardwired to speak - every child learns to speak but they have to go to school to learn to read and write (it is not as natural and its not as easy!)
What are pictographs?
Picture drawings - not the same as language, were symbols representing concepts
E.g American first nations tribes drawing things in the dirt - like a battle symbol
What happened to pictographs over time?
They became more and more abstract and simplified over time until they became letters that we use today
E.g. Ox symbol became the letter ‘a’
What role did ancient Egyptians have in the development of writing?
Hieroglyphics
HOW PEOPLE STARTED TO WRITE IN A SOUND BASED FASHION
Symbols for syllables and individual word sounds
Ox in their language began with a sound so everytime they wanted that sound they would use the ox symbol
What were the shapes used in writing dependent on?
The environment around people and the materials they had to use to write
E.g. reeds, clay
Which two languages only represent consonants still?
Hebrew and Arabic - guess from the context what the vowels would be
What did the Greeks do to the alphabet?
They added vowels to an alphabet full of consonants
The alphabet is…
The most efficient way of writing - it has never been superseded
How many people live in a country that employs an alphabetic writing system?
75%
Australia uses a ……. alphabet
Roman
What are the three types of writing systems used around the world today?
- Logographic: unique symbol for each word (e.g. Chinese)
- Syllabic: unique graphic symbol for each syllable (e.g. Japanese)
- Alphabetic unique graphic symbol for each phoneme (e.g. Italian, English and Russian)
What are the 3 conditions for a true alphabet?
- Every phoneme must be represented (have to show each sound)
- Correspondance between graphemes and phonemes
- Ideally 20-30 graphemes (memorising ability - rough number of sounds that lets all words be written)
What do shallow orthographics mean?
‘Shallow’ systems have one-one grapheme phoneme correspondance
What you see is what you say and what you say is what you see
What do deep orthographics mean?
Inconsistent grapheme-phoneme correspondance
- more than one way to write each phoneme
- more than one way to say each grapheme
For many adults, reading is…
completely automatic
Learning to read is not..
Automatic
What are the three different types of real words?
Regular words
Irregular words
Lexical hermits
What are regular words?
Predictable in pronunciation
Graphemes map onto phonemes
E.g. beef, mint, stove
What are irregular words?
Graphemes are not pronounced in the consistent, usual way
E.g. Steak, pint, love
Do not follow usual rules
What are lexical hermits?
No close neighbours - not similar to other words in sounds or looks
E.g. laugh, yacht, stomach
What is a non-word?
Non-word is a generic term for anything that is not a real word in the target language
Can be pronounceable or not
E.g. mimble, frmbpo, jrxpgx
What is a pseudoword?
Pronounceable non-words
E.g. jarby, frumpo, mimble, dax
Explain the dual-route model of reading
Two ways you can read a word
Direct access route: when you know a word
See written word, go into lexicon of stored grapheme-phoneme correspondences, say it
(skilled adult readers)
Indirect access route: unfamiliar words
See written word - sound it out with GPC rules and then attempt to pronounce based on the rules etc.
What is a pseudohomophone?
A non-word that is mistaken for a homophone, such as werk for work
Slower to reject them than other non-words - visual appearance seems to be the problem - more than sound is involved
What type of pseudowords are people slower to name?
Those with orthographically irregular neighbours
E.g. BAVE is like brave, save but also have (have is a very common irregular neighbour)
Than those without
E.g. BAZE is like maze, haze, daze
We are affected by all of the words we store around it
With non-words pronunciation being affected by the pronunciation of visually similar words, what does this mean for the dual-route model of reading?
Means you need to somehow go from lexicon and think about the GPC rules of other words around it
Means the dual-route model is too simple
Explain some evidence towards the role of a words sound in accessing its meaning?
‘Is it a flower, or clothing?’
Asked to read out the target words e.g. rose (real category member), rows (homophone of category member), sute (sounds like a category member)
- found false positives for both distractors
Participants must have phonologically recoded words
What is the role of meaning in accessing sound?
Sometimes we need to access semantics before we decide on the phonology
E.g. tear
What other 3 factors playing into word recognition during reading?
Frequency (lower frequency = lower recognition)
Imageability (words you can picture easily = quicker)
Spelling consistency (slower for inconsistent spellings)
What is phonological awareness?
Being aware of the sound structure of words
ESSENTIAL
What are the most common models of how children learn to read?
Stage/phase models
Steps children go through and they get better and better
What is Ehri’s stages of reading development?
Recognising letters/letter knowledge
Semi-phonetic: getting idea of sound - some sight words, letter names
Alphabetic stage: GPCs used consistently, become more automatic of reading chunks and sounding words out
Consolidated alphabet: read larger units (morphemes) - or things like ight, comprehend while you’re reading
What are Frith’s stages of reading development?
Logographic: words as pictures (STOP on a sign means stop but if you were to write it on a piece of paper, children cannot read it)
Alphabetic: learning GPCs
Orthographic: letter patterns internalised, seeing patterns in words and having them accessible, context can be used to help pronunciation, reading is fluent
What are the best two stage models of reading development?
Ehri’s stages
Frith’s stages
Arguments against the stage models are…
That it is a gradual development instead of going through stages
What is the shared assumption across all models?
Achieving reading skill required knowledge of the alphabetic principle (GCPs)
What is epilinguistic awareness?
Contrast to metalinguistic awareness
- stuff that you know without realising (e.g. hearing an american accent and knowing thats what it is but you cannot say how you knew it)
What is the evidence that phonological awareness is tied to literacy?
The relationship is bidirectional
Illiterate adults - performed poorly on PA tasks
Ex-illiterate adults - did much better
(If you have letters in your head to hang the sounds on you can manipulate the sounds much easier)
This is why it is important to teach children letters as well as sounds
Difficulties with early speech may lead to
Ostracism in the playground and poor self esteem if you cannot express yourself properly
Poor literacy leads to…
Dislike of school
Employment dissatisfaction
Low self-esteem
We need to intervene as early as we can so it doesn’t lead to this spiral of difficulty
What are the names of 2 disorders that involve difficulties with written language?
- Dyslexia
- Specific reading disorder
What is Dyslexia?
Difficulty in learning to read and write
DESPITE
- Taught enough
- Have intelligence
- Have the opportunity
(everything is in place but still cannot do it)
How many people have dyslexia?
4-15% of people
What is the discrepancy definition of dyslexia?
Discrepancy between expected and actual reading performance
Often if reading age is 2SD below your chronological age despite having an average IQ
What is the biggest challenge with dyslexia?
Reading words that are unfamiliar to you
What is the magnocellular deficit hypothesis of dyslexia?
Issues with the magnocells in the optic part of your eyes on the pathway into the brain
Makes it hard to direct visual attention to the words you want to read, to control your eye movements and to do visual searches while reading
What is the temporal auditory processing deficit hypothesis of dyslexia?
Auditory processing of time-based information is impaired with auditory stimuli are presented rapidly
What is some evidence of the magnocellular deficit hypothesis?
Dyslexics did worse than controls on tasks of rapid temporal, visual information processing
Dyslexics also report a swimming of words - seeing all of the information at once making it too hard to read
What is some evidence of the temporal auditory processing deficit hypothesis?
People with dyslexia show longer reaction times to sound based information
There is no consistent evidence that people with……. and …… translate directly into dyslexia
Low level visual and low level auditory processing
There is much more evidence towards dyslexia being much more of what kind of problem?
A phonological problem
What is the phonological deficit hypothesis of dyslexia?
Deficits in representing/using phonological information
- Problems with phonological awareness (issues with knowing what letters make what sounds)
What specific phonological tasks do those with dyslexia struggle with (4)?
Phoneme segmentation (breaking words into sounds)
Phoneme blending (putting them back together - sounding out)
Phoneme manipulation (e.g. what would string sound like without the r)
Identification of rhymes (do these words rhyme)
Explain a study showing dyslexic children have difficulty in categorising sounds
Bradley and Bryant
Tested poor readers and reading-age-matched younger ‘normal’ readers so the differences found between the groups isnt reading ability but instead whatever is causing the dyslexia
E.g. choose the odd word out (weed, peel, need, deed)
Poor readers were worse at this task than average readers and the poorest performance was by the poorest spellers.
Concluded difficulty in categorising sounds led to difficulties in learning to read and spell
Explain the study on training auditory organisation and reading/writing implications
Bradley and Bryant (again)
Focussed on children who couldn’t read yet (4-5 years) and gave them training sessions over 2 years (one of 4 types)
1. Sound categorization (peel weed need deed) - just thinking about sounds DID WELL
2. sounds + letters (sun sock seek and bed) - hanging sound on letters DID THE BEST
3. Training in concept categorization (farmyard animals, bush animals). NOT SO GOOD
4. No training NOT SO GOOD
Concluded if you link sounds to letters, it really improves childrens reading and writing
(causal link between phonological awareness and literacy)
Explain ‘matthew effects’
In the bible - the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer
Applies to language learning.
If you are already rich in your knowledge of words/vocab/spelling patterns you have so much richness you can just add to it. However, if you don’t know many words and you don’t have a basis to learn new words from, you will get poorer
Need to give extra richness to children who needs it
