Word Recognition and Reading Flashcards
What kinds of linguistic processing does reading involve?
Orthography: spelling of words (letter identity and order)
Phonology: sound of words
Semantics: meaning of words
Syntax: rules for combining words
Discourse processing: making inferences
What are some reading tasks and what do they test?
Lexical decision task = orthogrpahy (is this letter string a word?)
Semantic categorization = semantics
Reading aloud = phonology
Reaction times used in priming tasks
Eye movements during reading
Describe the automatic processing of visual word recognition
In skilled readers, word identification is automatic
Automatic =
- fast (speeded response tasks such as lexical decision task or naming task)
- unavoidable (stroop interference effect)
Automatic processes may be unconscious - as seen in masked priming (a prime is presented briefly and masked so that participants cannot identify it)
Different types of primes =
orthographic –> eagle-EAGLE
phonological –> eegle-EAGLE
semantic –> hawk-EAGLE
Discuss automatic phonological activation
Phonological respresentation is a necessary product of processing printed words, and it is mandatory in reading.
Evidence:
- homophone effects in semantic categorization
–> participants make more errors to a non-member when it is a homophone of a member in that category –> so they engage in obligatory phonological processing
- masked phonological priming effect
–> people respond faster to the target word when its preceded by a phonologically identical non-word, compared to a different control non-word
Discuss the word superiority effect
Method: a letter string is presented briefly followed by a pattern mask. Determine which of two letters was presented at a particular position.
Results: performance is better when the letter string forms a word than when it does
Suggests: that letter and word identification is a multidirectional process
Discuss McClelland and Rumelhart’s Interactive Activation Model
Explains READING
- Feature level (vertical line) is detected, activation is sent to all letters containing that feature and other letters are inhibited
- Letter level: when a particular letter is identified, activation is sent to all other word units containing that letter in teh relevant position
- Word level: activated word units increase the level of activation in the letter level units for the letters forming that word (top down processing accounts for word superiority effect)
Bottom up excitation/inhibition and top down excitation and inhibition
Within-level inhibition
But the problem of hte model is Slot Coding –> cannot explain the Cambridge email (assumes letter position is coded precisely)
Limitations of the Interactive Activation Model
Slot code assumption wrongly predicts JUDGE and JUGDE are as similar as JUDGE and JUNPE
cannot explain the transposed letter priming effect –> the idea that in a masked-priming task, response to a target is faster if its primed by a transposed letter prime than be a substituted letter prime
define a grapheme
letter or letter cluster that correspond to a single phoneme
what’s the difference between deep orthography and shallow orthography
Deep orthogrpahy (example = english)
- some spelling to sound mappings are highly ambiguous / inconsistent
- some words have irregular mapping
Shallow orthogrpahy
- mapping from grapheme to phoneme is predictable
- example = Italian
Seen in the relationship betwen orthography and phonology being much less predictable in English (the reading level is much slower)
How do we read pseudowords?
In order to read an irregular word, we use spelling to sound mapping rules.
When a word violates the rule about mapping grapheme to phoneme, cannot be read correctly via the rules and therefore must have a stored pronounciation for that word (lexicon = mental dictionary)
Regular words can be read either via the lexical or nonlexical route
Nonwords must be read via the grapheme-phoneme rule system
Words in the orthographic input lexicon are assumed to be effected by word freq
Discuss the different types of dyslexia
Acquired dyslexia: due to brain damage, previously literate individuals lose their ability to read
Developmental dyslexia; individuals who always struggled with reading
Impacts of acquired dyslexia
- surface dyslexia = intact nonword reading, poor at reading irregular words, regularisation of irregular words
- phonological dyslexia: intact word reading,, poor at reading non words –> difficulty with grapheme-phoneme conversion - therefore representations of familiar words are stored in an orthographic input lexicon
- deep dyslexia: problems in reading unfamiliar words and nonwords, semantic reading errors
Discuss the connectionist triangle model
- all information (orthogrpahy, phonology, semantics) is used to read both words and pseudowords
- two pathways in reading aloud:
1. direct orthography to phonology
2. indirect pathway through word means
–> semantic knowledge has largest impact on inconsistent words because of longer processing time
Surface dyslexia in that model:
- explains surface dyslexia in terms of damage to the semantic system in their triangle framework
- strong association between imparied semantic knowledge and surface dyslexia in dementia patients
Discuss reading and eye movements
- saccades: take 20-30 msecs, tend to move abuot 7=8 characters, during which you ‘see’ nothing –> ballistic
- fixations: 250 msecs –> words that aren’t fixated on are those that are common, short, predictable (only 20% of function words are fixated on)
- regressions: infrequent, right to left movements of about 2-5 characters
- end of line sweep –> longest saccade
Reading rate across different mediums
Fixation duraation is shorter for easier words
Reading rates differ across different types of reading material
