Reading

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Reading
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Logograms

• Def ideograms that represent a word or morpheme
  in addition to a concept
• Chinese writing system mostly logographic.
  (Some characters have phonetic components)
• Egyptian hieroglyphs also developed into a
  logographic writing system, since they correspond
  to sounds and words
• English logograms
• , _at_, , X (as in XING)

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Syllabaries

• Writing systems that have one symbol for each
  syllable
• Not practical for languages such as English,
  which have 14,000 possible syllables

Left romanji (Roman syllable) Middle
hiragana Right - Kanji
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Alphabetic Writing Systems

• Follow the phonemic principle. (Mostly) represent
  phonemes in a language not allophones! (which
  distinguishes them from phonetic alphabets)
• First alphabetic script Semitic
• Developed in Syria and Palestine between 1500 and
  2000 B.C.

Example of the phonemic principle plural s is
always written with the same letter, regardless
of whether its actually s or z
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Different kinds of alphabets

• Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic) only consonants
• Greek (adapted into Latin, Cyrillic, )
  consonants and vowels
• Korean phonemes represented in units of
  syllables

abcde aß?de ????? ????? ?????
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Korean phonemic units grouped by syllable

• 17 consonants and 11 vowels
• /l/ and /r/ represented by the same symbol, as
  variants of the one phoneme
• Consonants drawn to depict the place of
  articulation
• /m/ - suggests closing lips
• /k/ suggests raising back of tongue to velum
• Grouped into blocks, each representing a syllable

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Psycholinguistics and reading

• How does the style of writing affect the process
  of reading?
• L ? R / R ? L / top ? bottom
• logographic / syllabic / alphabetic
• vowels written or not
• sound-symbol correspondence

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Psycholinguistics and reading

• logographic systems
• high memory load, right hemisphere activity?
• syllabaries
• easy symbol-sound correspondence, abstract
  symbols. longer words (mean gt 2.1 syllables)
• alphabets
• if (ir)regular spelling, difficult to decode?

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Reading is NOT innate!

• Children non-readers have no natural desire to
  link word length with visual length!
• show children the words two and toothbrush,
  say the words to them, and they perform at
  chance, with no preference of matching the longer
  words with each other

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How do we learn to read?

• Phonetically? (phonologically)
• Easy with high letter-sound correspondences
• Children 9-10 y.o. read better when taught
  phonetically (in English)
• Intermediate readers read phonologically
• Fluent readers read orthographically
• where/wear, too/two

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How do we learn to read?

• Direct Route?
• Whole-word, look and say methods
• Higher initial success
• But fluent readers have little difficulty in
  identifying words in unfamiliar forms
• - AlTeRnAtInG cAsE
• only slows word recognition by 10
• -Cmabridge e-mail forward

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The Protoliteracy Period

• Early period when precursors of written language
  are set (Barron, 1992)
• 2 best predictors of reading achievement
• phonological skills (syllables, rhyming)
• ability to recognize letters

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Developing phonological skills

• Phonological skills develop in stages
• First segment syllables
• ma.ma / da.dy
• Then separate onsets and rimes
• cat / bat / mat / hat / rat
• dad / did / do / dug / dinner / dog
• Finally recognize individual phonemes
• peach / speech speed / spud

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Linguistic guessworkDeveloping phonological
awareness

• Guessing words based on one or more letters
• like as black
• of as off
• Invented spelling (reflects what they do/dont
  hear in the speech stream)
• numbers AS nubrs
• lady AS lade
• genius AS gnus (Treiman, 1993)

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Does your writing system shape your phonological
development?

• Japanese children cannot initially segment words
  at the phonemic level (neither can literate
  Chinese adults)
• But English children can by 2nd Grade
• Phonemic awareness develops because of exposure
  to phonemic writing system

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Reading Studies

• fMRIs dont access sounds in reading
• In normal reading, phonological processing areas
  arent active
• Become active in rhyming tasks
• Frequency matters!
• Do we read sesquipedalian the same way we read
  feet?

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IS X a part of the body?

• Guy van Orden Homophones
• Task judge whether words like ___ are (e.g.
  parts of the body)
• FEAT / HARE
• Errors happen more often with infrequent words in
  a language. (less often with pairs like SUN /
  SON)
• Conclusion frequent words are
• accessed directly, but less
• frequent words are accessed
• through their sounds

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Another example

• Eye want two play tennis, butt eye dew knot have
  uh racket!
• (if our access were completely phonological, this
  should not be hard to understand!)

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Measuring Subvocalization

• Micro-muscular movements occur if accessing
  phonology
• In beginning and intermediate readers
• When fluent readers encounter new, uncommon, or
  difficult words

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Eye-tracking http//www.mpi.nl/world/tg/eye-track
ing/eye-tracking.html

• fixation the length of time the eye is focused
  on one spot (gt200-250 ms)
• saccade quick jumps between fixations, little or
  no information gained (25-30 ms)
• lengths of fixations influenced by
• word length, frequency, grammatical function
  (longer fixations on verbs than nouns),
  predictability, overall complexity
• Fun note your eyes spend approximately 50
  minutes/day jumping in
• saccades, (Prof. David Erwin UIUC)

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Fixations

• In English, a fixation allows you to see (2
  or 3 X 15) letters
• that underlined l
• underlined letter yo
• letter your eye landed
• image on retina is fairly symmetrical around
  fixation point
• that underlined letter yo

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Size/Direction of saccades

• Length of saccade depends on script
• In Chinese 2 characters (2 whole words)
• Japanese 3.5 characters (syllables)
• Hebrew 5.5 characters (no vowels written)
• English - 7 /- 3 characters (vowels and
  consonants)
• In English, 85-90 of jumps are rightward
• direction of saccades determined by language

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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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you can gain information from a large window of
text
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Eye-tracking Experiments (McConkie Rayner)

• Manipulated number of characters viewed to see
  how far ahead/behind we look while reading
• Anything less than (2or3 X 15) letters slows
  reading time
• No improvements with larger windows
• Only current word under fixation is actually
  recognized

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the politician read the spaach to his colleagues
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the politician read the speech to his colleagues
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Eye-tracking Experiments (McConkie Rayner)

• SPAACH presented until it was time for the eyes
  to fixate on the word, and then replaced with
  SPEECH
• If the change happened
• gt 12 characters to the left of SPAACH, no extra
  fixations
• 7-12 characters to the left, no conscious ability
  to notice change, but increased fixation time
• within fixation, subjects are aware of change

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the politician read the blaart to his colleagues
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the politician read the speech to his colleagues
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Eye-tracking Experiments (McConkie Rayner)

• BLAART presented, then replaced with SPEECH
• If the change happened
• gt 12 characters to the left of BLAART, no extra
  fixations
• 7-12 characters to the left, not conscious of
  change, but longer fixation time than with SPAACH
• Some visual information is gained prior to actual
  fixation !

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invincible
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• What was the word?

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intolerable
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• What was the word?

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invincible

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intolerable

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Where in the word do we fixate?

• Kevin ORegan fixate on point, then word
  appeared centered around that point, or shifted
  to one side or another
• Optimum position just left of center of word
• Short/predictable words can be recognized while
  eyes are fixating on preceding word
• (They dont have their own fixations)

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Reading is automatic(you cant help but read
this!)

• In psychology, we distinguish between
• automatic processes understanding first
  language, breathing, feeling hunger, and reading
  (for fluent readers)
• attentional processes focusing on task,
  understanding foreign language, reading (for
  beginners)

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Stroop task http//www.snre.umich.edu/eplab/demos
/st0/stroopdesc.html

• Demonstrates the automaticity of reading (Also
  shows our inability to turn off our native
  language)
• Used in WWII to detect spies

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(No Transcript)
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Developmental Dyslexia

• Genetic disorder
• Originates in childhood
• Disorder in development of skills that are
  necessary for reading
• More commonly diagnosed in countries where
  sound-to-letter correspondence is irregular
  (English vs. Dutch)
• Diagnosed through comparison
• 18 months to 2 years behind in development of
  reading skills

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Developmental Dyslexia

• Described as failure to attain basic
  phonological skills that underlie reading
• Unable to
• play word games where strip off phoneme or add
  phoneme - /s/ and peach
• determine rhyming words (speech, grouch, bleach)
• rely heavily on sight vocabulary
• spelling errors unrelated to target word
• With 5 y.o. children, best predictor of dyslexia
  is inability to name letters

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Is dyslexia specific to language?

• Dyslexics are
• Slower at naming objects
• Slower at learning nonsense names for arbitrary
  shapes
• BUT perform as well as non-dyslexic children on
  arbitrary shape matching tasks
• So it does seem to have something to do with the
  linguistic system itself

this is a kintel
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Learning to read with dyslexia

• Two approaches
• train children to gain a sight vocabulary
• (about 80 of dyslexic children are able to gain
  a significant sight vocabulary, and most rely
  solely on it)
• train children on the phonological skills
• start with segmenting into syllables (starting
  point for most severe dyslexics)
• then separate onsets and rimes (starting point
  for mild dyslexics)
• finallyindividual letters

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The gift of dyslexia

• Dyslexics tend to have excellent
  spatial/visualization skills, high levels of
  creativity, and unique perspectives of the world.
  Here are just a few famous dyslexics
• Winston Churchill Orlando Bloom Tom Cruise Whoopi
  Goldberg Jay Leno Keanu Reeves Leonardo da
  Vinci Pablo Picasso Mohammed Ali Walt
  Disney Albert Einstein Thomas Edison Stonewall
  Jackson Cher John Lennon George
  Washington Agatha Christie
• Hans Christian Andersen
• Alexander Graham Bell

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Deep Dyslexia

• paralexia see one word, and produce another
  related in meaning/form
• Unable to read grammatical morphemes
• The waiter brought some syrup for his pancakes.
• Servant bringhoneythe waffle.
• Unable to read nonsense words
• Nouns easier than verbs, adjectives. Special
  difficulty with function words, inflectional
  morphemes
• Semantic substitutions
• turtle ? crocodile / shining ? sun / colonel ?
  uniform
• Visual substitutions
• signal ? single / decree ? degree / gain ? grain

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Acquired Dyslexia

• Dyslexia due to brain damage, often associated
  with spelling disorders (dysgraphias)
• deep dyslexia
• phonological dyslexia
• surface dyslexia

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Phonological Dyslexia

• patients can read words they know, including
  irregular words
• unable to read nonsense words like gorp
• Cant translate letters into sounds
• Route between letter sequences and meanings still
  intact

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Surface Dyslexia

• surface dyslexia patients unable to read
  irregular words like yacht, but can read
  regular nonsense words
• Rely heavily on letter-to-sound correspondence
• Route between letters and phonemes intact
• blaart forus gorp wug guw calb