scholarly journals Why is nonword reading so variable in adult skilled readers?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Coltheart ◽  
Anastasia Ulicheva
Keyword(s):  
Letter String ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Large Database ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Nonword Reading ◽  
Two Factors

When the task is reading nonwords aloud, skilled adult readers are very variable in the responses they produce: a nonword can evoke as many as 24 different responses in a group of such readers. Why is nonword reading so variable? We analysed a large database of reading responses to nonwords, and identified two factors responsible for this variability. The first factor is variability in graphemic parsing (the parsing of a letter string into its constituent graphemes): the same nonword can be graphemically parsed in different ways by different readers. The second factor is phoneme assignment: even when all subjects produce the same graphemic parsing of a nonword, they vary in what phonemes they assign to the resulting set of graphemes. We consider the implications of these results for the computational modelling of reading, for the assessment of impairments of nonword reading, and for the study of reading aloud in other alphabetically-written languages and in nonalphabetic writing systems.

scholarly journals Why is nonword reading so variable in adult skilled readers?

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e4879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Coltheart ◽  
Anastasia Ulicheva
Keyword(s):  
Letter String ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Large Database ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Nonword Reading ◽  
Two Factors

When the task is reading nonwords aloud, skilled adult readers are very variable in the responses they produce: a nonword can evoke as many as 24 different responses in a group of such readers. Why is nonword reading so variable? We analysed a large database of reading responses to nonwords, which documented that two factors contribute to this variability. The first factor is variability in graphemic parsing (the parsing of a letter string into its constituent graphemes): the same nonword can be graphemically parsed in different ways by different readers. The second factor is phoneme assignment: even when all subjects produce the same graphemic parsing of a nonword, they vary in what phonemes they assign to the resulting set of graphemes. We consider the implications of these results for the computational modelling of reading, for the assessment of impairments of nonword reading, and for the study of reading aloud in other alphabetically written languages and in nonalphabetic writing systems.

scholarly journals Why is nonword reading so variable in adult skilled readers?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Coltheart ◽  
Anastasia Ulicheva
Keyword(s):  
Letter String ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Large Database ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Nonword Reading ◽  
Two Factors

When the task is reading nonwords aloud, skilled adult readers are very variable in the responses they produce: a nonword can evoke as many as 24 different responses in a group of such readers. Why is nonword reading so variable? We analysed a large database of reading responses to nonwords, and identified two factors responsible for this variability. The first factor is variability in graphemic parsing (the parsing of a letter string into its constituent graphemes): the same nonword can be graphemically parsed in different ways by different readers. The second factor is phoneme assignment: even when all subjects produce the same graphemic parsing of a nonword, they vary in what phonemes they assign to the resulting set of graphemes. We consider the implications of these results for the computational modelling of reading, for the assessment of impairments of nonword reading, and for the study of reading aloud in other alphabetically-written languages and in nonalphabetic writing systems.

De Analfabetische Blik en de Geletterde Bril

2002 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 9-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Kurvers
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Metalinguistic Awareness ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Low Educated ◽  
Metalinguistic Knowledge

Until recently, studies about adults' metalinguistic knowledge nearly always dealt with adult readers. Since explanations about the development of children's metalinguistic knowledge are not conclusive about the influence of either (language) development or experience with written language. Adult illiterates form a nice test case for these contrasting hypotheses, since they are both experienced language users and inexperienced in the written code. Therefore, a research project was carried out to compare the metalinguistic knowledge of adult illiterates with another group of non-readers (young children) and with low-educated adult readers. The research project was carried out with 24 young pre-readers, 25 adult (true) illiterates and 23 adult readers with about four years of schooling. All groups were offered different tests of metalinguistic awareness on the phonological, lexical/semantic and discourse-level of language. Analysis of variance and posthoc analyses showed that, on the whole, there were hardly any differences between young children and all adults in the knowledge of linguistic entities (favouring the developmental hypotheses) while there were many significant differences between the no-nreaders on the one hand (both children and adults) and low-educated literates on the other hand. It is concluded that experience with writing systems plays a major role in triggering metalinguistic knowledge.

Strategies for Representing Tone in African Writing Systems

1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Bird
Keyword(s):  
Practical Experience ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Tone Languages ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Vernacular Literacy ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
As Stress

Tone languages provide some interesting challenges for the designers of new orthographies. One approach is to omit tone marks, just as stress is not marked in English (zero marking). Another approach is to do phonemic tone analysis, and then make heavy use of diacritic symbols to distinguish the "tonemes" (shallow marking). While orthographies based on either system have been successful, this may be thanks to our ability to manage inadequate orthographies, rather than to any intrinsic advantage which is afforded by one or the other approach. In many cases, practical experience with both kinds of orthography in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that people have not been able to attain the level of reading and writing fluency that we know to be possible for the orthographies of non-tonal languages. In some cases this can be attributed to a socio linguistic setting which does not favour vernacular literacy. In other cases, the orthography itself may be to blame. If the orthography of a tone language is difficult to use or to learn, then a good part of the reason may be that the designer either has not paid enough attention to the FUNCTION of tone in the language, or has not ensured that the information encoded in the orthography is ACCESSIBLE to the ordinary (non-linguist) user of the language. If the writing of tone is not going to continue to be a stumbling block to literacy efforts, then a fresh approach to tone orthography is required — one which assigns high priority to these two factors. This article describes the problems with orthographies that use too few or too many tone marks, and critically evaluates a wide range of creative intermediate solutions. I review the contributions made by phonology and reading theory, and provide some broad methodological principles to guide those who are seeking to represent tone in a writing system. The tone orthographies of several languages from sub-Saharan Africa are presented throughout the article, with particular emphasis on some tone languages of Cameroon.

Eye Movements of Highly Skilled and Average Readers: Differential Effects of Frequency and Predictability

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 1065-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Ashby ◽  
Keith Rayner ◽  
Charles Clifton
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Average Readers ◽  
Target Words

This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial–temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.

Word frequency modulates morpheme-based reading in poor and skilled Italian readers

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFANIA MARCOLINI ◽  
DANIELA TRAFICANTE ◽  
PIERLUIGI ZOCCOLOTTI ◽  
CRISTINA BURANI
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Reading Fluency ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Derivational Suffix

ABSTRACTA previous study reported that, similar to young and adult skilled readers, Italian developmental dyslexics read pseudowords made up of a root and a derivational suffix faster and more accurately than simple pseudowords. Unlike skilled readers, only dyslexic and reading-matched younger children benefited from morphological structure in reading words aloud. In this study, we show that word frequency affects the probability of morpheme-based reading, interacting with reading ability. Young skilled readers named low- but not high-frequency morphologically complex words faster than simple words. By contrast, the advantage for morphologically complex words was present in poor readers irrespective of word frequency. Adult readers showed no facilitating effect of morphological structure. These results indicate that young readers use reading units (morphemes) that are larger than the single-grapheme grain size. It is argued that morpheme-based reading is important for obtaining reading fluency (rather than accuracy) in transparent orthographies and is useful particularly in children with limited reading ability who do not fully master whole-word processing.

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