Form–meaning links in the development of visual word recognition

Learning to read takes time and it requires explicit instruction. Three decades of research has taught us a good deal about how children learn about the links between orthography and phonology during word reading development. However, we have learned less about the links that children build between orthographic form and meaning. This is surprising given that the goal of reading development must be for children to develop an orthographic system that allows meanings to be accessed quickly, reliably and efficiently from orthography. This review considers whether meaning-related information is used when children read words aloud, and asks what we know about how and when children make connections between form and meaning during the course of reading development.

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Do Spanish Children Use the Syllable in Visual Word Recognition in Learning to Read?

The Spanish Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1017/s113874160000367x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 63-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Juan E. Jiménez ◽

Eduardo García ◽

Isabel O'Shanahan ◽

Estefanía Rojas

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Reading Instruction ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Word Reading ◽

First Grade ◽

Visual Word ◽

First Year ◽

Learning To Read ◽

Initial Syllable ◽

Second Year

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Spanish children that are learning to read use the syllable unit in word reading. We used a visual version of the syllable monitoring technique (Mehler, Dommerges, Freavenfelder & Seguí, 1981). For Experiment I, we selected first grade readers at the end of the first year of reading instruction. In the Experiment II we selected second grade readers at the middle of the second year of reading instruction. Participants responded whenever the structure of the target string (e.g., bal) appeared at the beginning of a subsequently presented printed word (e.g., bala). The target was either a consonant-vowel (CV) or consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) structure and either did or did not correspond to the initial syllable of the target-bearing word. At the end of the first year of reading instruction, children showed significant effects of syllable compatibility (faster detection times when the targets correspond to the initial syllable of target-bearing words than when they did not). When we tested children of the second year of reading instruction, they also showed a syllable compatibility effect. These results suggest that Spanish children use syllabic units at the beginning of reading instruction in the visual word recognition.

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DIFFERENCES IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION BETWEEN L1 AND L2 SPEAKERS

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263117000201 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 40 (2) ◽

pp. 319-339

Author(s):

Pauline Schröter ◽

Sascha Schroeder

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Reading Fluency ◽

Reading Development ◽

Visual Word ◽

Decision Task ◽

School Students ◽

Mixed Effect ◽

L2 Processing ◽

The Impact

AbstractInvestigating the impact of linguistic characteristics on visual word recognition in children, we studied whether differences in native (L1) and second language (L2) processing already emerge at the beginning of reading development. German elementary school students in grades 2 to 6 completed a battery of standardized tests and a lexical decision task (LDT). Though L1 speakers outperformed L2 speakers on German skills, groups did not differ in their overall performance on the LDT. However, results from mixed-effect models revealed greater effects for word frequency and length in L2 over L1 speakers, indicating qualitative differences in the sensitivity to linguistic information between groups. This distinction persisted across all grades and after controlling for differences in vocabulary size and reading fluency. Findings extend evidence provided for adult L2 processing, suggesting that varying language exposure shapes the development of the word-recognition system already in the early stages of reading development.

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Is RoAsT tougher than StEAk?: The effect of case mixing on perception of multi-letter graphemes

Psihologija ◽

10.2298/psi1001103h ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 103-116 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jelena Havelka ◽

Clive Frankish

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Lexical Decision ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Word Reading ◽

Response Times ◽

Visual Word ◽

Decision Task ◽

Response Latencies ◽

Visual Segmentation ◽

Word Shape

Case mixing is a technique that is used to investigate the perceptual processes involved in visual word recognition. Two experiments examined the effect of case mixing on lexical decision latencies. The aim of these experiments was to establish whether different case mixing patterns would interact with the process of appropriate visual segmentation and phonological assembly in word reading. In the first experiment, case mixing had a greater effect on response times to words when it led to visual disruption of the multi-letter graphemes (MLGs) as well as the overall word shape (e.g. pLeAd), compared to when it disrupted overall word shape only (e.g. plEAd). A second experiment replicated this finding with words in which MLGs represent either the vowel (e.g. bOaST vs. bOAst) or the consonant sound (e.g. sNaCK vs. sNAcK). These results confirm that case mixing can have different effect depending on the type of orthographic unit that is broken up by the manipulation. They demonstrate that graphemes are units that play an important role in visual word recognition, and that manipulation of their presentation by case mixing will have a significant effect on response latencies to words in a lexical decision task. As such these findings need to be taken into account by the models of visual word recognition.

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The processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition: Typicality effects and orthographic correlates

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/02724980443000782 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 59 (5) ◽

pp. 920-948 ◽

Cited By ~ 77

Author(s):

Joanne Arciuli ◽

Linda Cupples

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Word Reading ◽

Visual Word ◽

Lexical Stress ◽

Single Word ◽

Stress Assignment ◽

Word Level ◽

Disyllabic Words ◽

Single Word Reading

Many studies that have examined reading at the single-word level have been restricted to the processing of monosyllabic stimuli, and, as a result, lexical stress has not been widely investigated. In the experiments reported here, we used disyllabic words and nonwords to investigate the processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found an effect of stress typicality in naming and lexical decision. Typically stressed words (trochaic nouns and iambic verbs) elicited fewer errors than atypically stressed words (iambic nouns and trochaic verbs). In Experiment 3, we carried out an analysis of 340 word endings and found clear orthographic correlates of both grammatical category and lexical stress in word endings. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that readers are sensitive to these cues in their processing of nonwords during two tasks: sentence construction and stress assignment. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to psycholinguistic models of single-word reading.

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Does Viotin Activate Violin More Than Viocin?

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000223 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 61 (1) ◽

pp. 23-29 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Manuel Perea ◽

Victoria Panadero

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Developmental Dyslexia ◽

Computational Models ◽

Error Rates ◽

Visual Word ◽

Base Word ◽

Similar Response ◽

Skilled Readers ◽

Young Readers

The vast majority of neural and computational models of visual-word recognition assume that lexical access is achieved via the activation of abstract letter identities. Thus, a word’s overall shape should play no role in this process. In the present lexical decision experiment, we compared word-like pseudowords like viotín (same shape as its base word: violín) vs. viocín (different shape) in mature (college-aged skilled readers), immature (normally reading children), and immature/impaired (young readers with developmental dyslexia) word-recognition systems. Results revealed similar response times (and error rates) to consistent-shape and inconsistent-shape pseudowords for both adult skilled readers and normally reading children – this is consistent with current models of visual-word recognition. In contrast, young readers with developmental dyslexia made significantly more errors to viotín-like pseudowords than to viocín-like pseudowords. Thus, unlike normally reading children, young readers with developmental dyslexia are sensitive to a word’s visual cues, presumably because of poor letter representations.

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The Sound of Enemies and Friends in the Neighborhood

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000113 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 58 (6) ◽

pp. 454-463 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Diane Pecher ◽

Inge Boot ◽

Saskia van Dantzig ◽

Carol J. Madden ◽

David E. Huber ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Neighborhood Effects ◽

Classification Performance ◽

Visual Word ◽

Orthographic Neighborhood ◽

Semantic Classification ◽

Semantic Class ◽

Orthographic Neighbors ◽

Target Words

Previous studies (e.g., Pecher, Zeelenberg, & Wagenmakers, 2005) found that semantic classification performance is better for target words with orthographic neighbors that are mostly from the same semantic class (e.g., living) compared to target words with orthographic neighbors that are mostly from the opposite semantic class (e.g., nonliving). In the present study we investigated the contribution of phonology to orthographic neighborhood effects by comparing effects of phonologically congruent orthographic neighbors (book-hook) to phonologically incongruent orthographic neighbors (sand-wand). The prior presentation of a semantically congruent word produced larger effects on subsequent animacy decisions when the previously presented word was a phonologically congruent neighbor than when it was a phonologically incongruent neighbor. In a second experiment, performance differences between target words with versus without semantically congruent orthographic neighbors were larger if the orthographic neighbors were also phonologically congruent. These results support models of visual word recognition that assume an important role for phonology in cascaded access to meaning.

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