Dual-stage and dual-deficit? Word recognition processes during text reading across the reading fluency continuum

Central questions in the study of visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia are whether early lexical activation precedes and supports decoding (a dual-stage view) or not (dual-route view), and the locus of deficits in dysfluent reading. The dual-route view predicts early word frequency and length interaction, whereas the dual-stage view predicts word frequency effect to precede the interaction effect. These predictions were tested on eye movements data collected from (n = 152) children aged 9–10 among whom reading dysfluency was overrepresented. In line with the dual-stage view, the results revealed an early word frequency effect in first fixation duration followed by robust word length effect in refixation probability and an interaction of word frequency and word length in summed refixation duration. This progression was advanced in fluent reading to be observable already in first fixation duration. Poor reading fluency was mostly explained by inflated first fixation durations, and to stronger word frequency and length effects in summed refixation duration. This pattern of results suggests deficits in early letter encoding and slowness in serial grapheme-phoneme conversion. In contrast to the widely held belief, the holistic orthographic processing of words seemed to be intact.

A comparative analysis on digital libraries and academic search engines from the dual-route perspective

Purpose Digital libraries and academic search engines have developed as two important online scholarly information sources with different features. The purpose of this study is to compare digital libraries and academic search engines from the perspective of the dual-route model. Design/methodology/approach Research hypotheses were developed. Potential participants were recruited to answer an online survey distributing at Chinese social media out of which 251 responses were deemed to be valid and used for data analysis. The paired samples t-test was used to compare the means. Findings Both information quality (central route) and source credibility (peripheral route) of digital libraries are significantly higher than those of academic search engines, while there is no significant difference between digital libraries and academic search engines in terms of affinity (peripheral route). Practical implications In the digital information society, the important status of digital libraries as conventional information sources should be spread by necessary measures. Academic search engines can act as complementary online information sources for seeking academic information rather than the substitute for digital libraries. Practitioners of digital libraries should value the complementary role of academic search engines and encourage users to use academic search engines while emphasizing the importance of digital libraries as conventional information sources. Originality/value According to the dual-route model, this study compares digital libraries and academic search engines in terms of information quality, source credibility and affinity, which the authors believe presents a new lens for digital libraries research and practice alike.

Rare case of intra-oral palatal (soft palate) fibro-lipoma

<p>Amongst various differential diagnoses possible for intra-oral (palatal) mass, possibility of fibro-lipoma is extremely rare but documented in literature, and hence should be a consideration. Such patient requires thorough evaluation and step-wise approach to treat. This case study documents for a 30-year-old male patient presenting with such mass and chief complaints of post nasal drip, nasal obstruction (right side&gt;left side) and intermittent headache for 3 years. After radiological and endoscopic examination, the mass was surgically removed in toto via dual route (trans-oral and endoscopic). Lipomas are uncommon tumors in the oral cavity, and palate being the rarest amongst them as is our case. It would be strongly advocated to keep lipoma in the differential diagnosis when evaluating a palatal mass. Also, it is worth mentioning and recommending that a careful radiological examination of large lesions arising from the palate is a must before approaching for surgery.</p>

Morphological processing and individual frequency effects in L1 and L2 Spanish

Surface frequency and proficiency modulate visual morphological processing in second language (L2) learners, but less is known about auditory morphological processing. Moreover, working memory affects morphosyntactic processing, but it is unclear whether it also modulates word structure processing. In the present study, Spanish monolinguals and beginner and advanced L2 learners of Spanish completed an auditory lexical decision task in Spanish containing verbs varying in morphological complexity, an individual surface frequency task, and a working memory task. Beginner L2 learners needed more time to process infrequent morphologically complex words, but monolinguals and advanced L2 learners were unaffected by morphological complexity or surface frequency. Also, working memory did not modulate morphological processing. Taken together, the findings suggest a dual-route mechanism at initial stages of L2 acquisition and a whole-word route for Spanish monolinguals and advanced L2 learners. The findings also support the extension of dual-route models to L2 populations and suggest that the selection of a morphological processing route results from linguistic rather than cognitive reasons.

Vowel dyslexia in Turkish: A window to the complex structure of the sublexical route

We report on developmental vowel dyslexia, a type of dyslexia that selectively affects the reading aloud of vowel letters. We identified this dyslexia in 55 Turkish-readers aged 9–10, and made an in-depth multiple-case analysis of the reading of 17 participants whose vowel dyslexia was relatively selective. These participants made significantly more vowel errors (vowel substitution, omission, migration, and addition) than age-matched controls, and significantly more errors in vowel letters than in consonants. Vowel harmony, a pivotal property of Turkish phonology, was intact and the majority of their vowel errors yielded harmonic responses. The transparent character of Turkish orthography indicates that vowel dyslexia is not related to ambiguity in vowel conversion. The dyslexia did not result from a deficit in the phonological-output stage, as the participants did not make vowel errors in nonword repetition or in repeating words they had read with a vowel error. The locus of the deficit was not in the orthographic-visual-analyzer either, as their same-different decision on words differing in vowels was intact, and so was their written-word comprehension. They made significantly more errors on nonwords than on words, indicating that their deficit was in vowel processing in the sublexical route. Given that their single-vowels conversion was intact, and that they showed an effect of the number of vowels, we conclude that their deficit is in a vowel-specific buffer in the sublexical route. They did not make vowel errors within suffixes, indicating that suffixes are converted as wholes in a separate sublexical sub-route. These results have theoretical implications for the dual-route model: they indicate that the sublexical route converts vowels and consonants separately, that the sublexical route includes a vowel buffer, and a separate morphological conversion route. The results also indicate that types of dyslexia can be detected in transparent languages given detailed error-analysis and dyslexia-relevant stimuli.