Reading and the phonetic module

1
Reading and the phonetic module

• Carol A. Fowler
• Haskins LaboratoriesUniversity of Connecticut
• Yale University

2
Perception of the speech code, 1967

• Speech is coarticulated
• The consequence is extreme context-sensitivity of
  the acoustic signal and the absence of
  phone-sized segments in the signal
• Coarticulation is a special behavior--special to
  discrete actions implemented in overlapping time
  frames

3
Perception of the speech code, 1967

• Perception tracks articulation more transparently
  than it tracks the acoustic signal
• Listeners recruit their speech motor systems to
  recover consonants and vowels from acoustic
  products of coarticulated speech

4
(No Transcript)
5
The motor theory of speech perception revised,
1985

• New to the theory (among other things) speech is
  produced and perceived by a phonetic module
• Modules are domain specific
• Processing is fast, mandatory
• They are encapuslated
• They are cognitively impenetrable

6
What does this have to do with reading?

• It helps to explain why learning to read can be
  difficult
• It raises the question, though, why reading is
  even possible

7
Why learning to read can be hard

• The module derives consonants and vowels
• It is cognitively impenetrable
• To appreciate the alphabetic principle, children
  need phonemic awareness
• The phonetic module makes achieving awareness
  difficult

8
But why is reading even possible

• It is not just possible, it can get so easy that
  people read for pleasure!
• The phonetic module provides the inputs to higher
  levels of linguistic processing
• Evolution cannot have prepared it for
  orthographic inputs

9
Is reading purely visual?

• That would mean not taking advantage of the
  humans biological adaptation for language
• It would mean that children could not take
  advantage of the fact that they already know the
  language they are learning to read
• Anyway the data disconfirm that idea

10
The data

• Within ms of seeing a printed word, readers of
  all tested writing systems access the pronounced
  forms of words

11
What do the data mean?

• Readers do make use of their spoken language
  capability and knowledge
• IGMs special interest in 1990 They are coming
  up with phonetic module outputs when print cannot
  be an input to the module. However do they do
  that?

12
A conclusion

• reading is possible, because it is possible for
  readers to come up with acceptable inputs to
  their spoken language system outside the module.

13
But why should that be possible?

• Evolution could not have anticipated the
  development of writing systems
• There must be independent reasons for supposing
  that phonological language forms can be
  represented centrally (extra-modularly, and so
  not cognitively impenetrably)

14
IGMs independent reasons

• Rehearsal--cognitive access is essential
• Dialect information is lost in what is passed on
  from the module. But we are aware of dialect
  differences and they guide our social actions and
  attitudes
• So the module must provide phonetic
  representations to central systems

15
The final move

• Rehearsal tells us that language users can allow
  the output of the phonetic module to be its input
• So another kind of input that the module can
  accept is phonetic or phonological

16
So how does reading work?

• In central systems, ultimately highly automatized
  processes generate phonological forms from print
• These serve as input to the phonetic module
• That is where reading first makes contact with
  our capabilties and knowledge of the spoken
  language.