Children's reading of words, pseudohomophones, and other nonwords

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 543-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Laxon ◽  
Jackie Masterson ◽  
Alison Gallagher ◽  
Julia Pay

In Experiment 1 children aged 8-9 and 9-10 years were tested for neighbourhood and pseudohomophone effects in nonword reading. Neighbourhood effects (N effects) were robust irrespective of group or type of nonword. Pseudohomophones were read more accurately than other nonwords but this finding was robust only for the younger 8-9-year-olds. High-frequency words were read more accurately than low-frequency words, but the reverse applied to pseudohomophones based on high- and low-frequency words, although this was not robust. Error rates for the 9-10-year-olds in Experiment 1 were low, and so it was difficult to interpret the lack of a pseudohomophone advantage for reading nonwords in this age group. Experiment 2 was therefore carried out, which consisted of a replication of the first study with a further group of 9- 10-year-olds, but pronunciation latencies were measured, as well as accuracy. All the effects obtained in Experiment 1 were replicated but, in addition, an advantage for pseudohomophones in terms of pronunciation latencies was observed. The implications for accounts of reading development are discussed.

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Anne Calhoon ◽  
Lauren Leslie

Beginning readers' rime reading accuracy was assessed over three years to examine the influence of word frequency and rime-neighborhood size (the number of single syllable words with the same rime) on words presented in lists and stories. Twenty-seven 1st- and 2nd- grade students read 54 words and 27 nonwords containing rimes from different size neighborhoods. In Year 1, children showed effects of neighborhood size in high frequency words read in stories and in low frequency words read in lists and stories. In Year 2, rimes from large neighborhoods were read more accurately than rimes from medium and small neighborhoods in high- and low-frequency words. In Year 3, no effects of rime-neighborhood size were found for high-frequency words, but effects on low-frequency words continued. These results support Leslie and Calhoon's (1995) developmental model of the effects of rime-neighborhood size and word frequency as a function of higher levels of word learning.


2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Bybee

Phonological evidence supports the frequency-based model proposed in the article by Nick Ellis. Phonological reduction occurs earlier and to a greater extent in high-frequency words and phrases than in low-frequency ones. A model that accounts for this effect needs both an exemplar representation to show phonetic variation and the ability to represent multiword combinations. The maintenance of alternations conditioned by word boundaries, such as French liaison, also provides evidence that multiword sequences are stored and can accrue representational strength. The reorganization of phonetic exemplars in favor of the more frequent types provides evidence for some abstraction in categories beyond the simple registration of tokens of experience.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174702182096906
Author(s):  
Todd A Kahan ◽  
Louisa M Slowiaczek ◽  
Ned Scott ◽  
Brian T Pfohl

Whether attention is allocated to an entire word or can be confined to part of a word was examined in an experiment using a visual composite task. Participants saw a study word, a cue to attend to either the right or left half, and a test word, and indicated if the cued half of the words (e.g., left) was the same (e.g., TOLD-TONE) or different (e.g., TOLD-WINE). Prior research using this task reports a larger congruency effect for low-frequency words relative to high-frequency words but extraneous variables were not equated. In this study ( N = 33), lexical (orthographic neighbourhood density) and sublexical (bigram frequency) variables were controlled, and word frequency was manipulated. Results indicate that word frequency does not moderate the degree to which parts of a word can be selectively attended/ignored. Response times to high-frequency words were faster than response times to low-frequency words but the congruency effect was equivalent. The data support a capacity model where attention is equally distributed across low-frequency and high-frequency words but low-frequency words require additional processing resources.


2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (8) ◽  
pp. 1155-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Malouf ◽  
Sachiko Kinoshita

Two experiments investigated whether priming due to a match in just the onset between a masked prime and target is found with high-frequency target words. Forster and Davis (1991, Exp. 5) reported that the masked onset priming effect was absent for high-frequency words and used the finding to argue that the effect has its locus in the grapheme–phoneme mapping process that operates serially within the nonlexical route. Experiment 1 used primes that were unrelated to targets and found a masked onset priming effect of equal size for high-frequency and low-frequency target words. Experiment 2 used form-related primes as used by Forster and Davis, and again found that the effect of onset mismatch was not dependent on target word frequency. These results are interpreted in terms of an alternative view that the masked onset priming effect has its origin in the process of preparing a speech response.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARJA PORTIN ◽  
MINNA LEHTONEN ◽  
MATTI LAINE

This study investigated the recognition of Swedish inflected nouns in two participant groups. Both groups were Finnish-speaking late learners of Swedish, but the groups differed in regard to their Swedish language proficiency. In a visual lexical decision task, inflected Swedish nouns from three frequency ranges were contrasted with corresponding monomorphemic nouns. The reaction times and error rates suggested morphological decomposition for low-frequency inflected words. Yet, both medium- and high-frequency inflected words appeared to possess full-form representations. Despite an overall advantage for the more proficient participants, this pattern was present in both groups. The results indicate that even late exposure to a language can yield such input representations for morphologically complex words that are typical of native speakers.


1981 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 959-965
Author(s):  
Delphine Yelen ◽  
Gary B. Forbach

College students were classified as either skilled or less skilled readers on the basis of reading comprehension scores and were then asked to judge whether high-frequency words, low-frequency words, orthographically legal nonwords, and orthographically illegal nonwords were words or nonwords. Skilled readers were significantly faster than less skilled readers on this task for all stimulus categories, but the largest differences between groups were found for low-frequency words and legal nonwords. Differences between the groups were larger for orthographically illegal nonwords than for high-frequency words. It was concluded that less skilled college readers do not use orthographic structure as an aid in lexical decisions as well as skilled readers and that their ability to decode even high-frequency words is not as automatic as that of the skilled readers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Fink ◽  
Matthew Goldrick

AbstractOver the past several decades, an increasing number of empirical studies have documented the interaction of information across the traditional linguistic modules of phonetics, phonology, and lexicon. For example, the frequency with which a word occurs influences its phonetic properties of its sounds; high frequency words tend to be reduced relative to low frequency words. Lexicalist Exemplar Models have been successful in accounting for this body of results through a single mechanism,


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