Parafoveal letter-position coding in reading.

The masked-priming lexical decision task has been the paradigm of choice for investigating how readers code for letter identity and position. Insight into the temporal integration of information between prime and target words has pointed out, among other things, that readers do not code for the absolute position of letters. This conception has spurred various accounts of the word recognition process, but the results at present do not favor one account in particular. Thus, employing a new strategy, the present study moves out of the arena of temporal- and into the arena of spatial information integration. We present two lexical decision experiments that tested how the processing of six-letter target words is influenced by simultaneously presented flanking stimuli (each stimulus was presented for 150 ms). We manipulated the orthographic relatedness between the targets and flankers, in terms of both letter identity (same/different letters based on the target's outer/inner letters) and letter position (intact/reversed order of letters and of flankers, contiguous/noncontiguous flankers). Target processing was strongly facilitated by same-letter flankers, and this facilitatory effect was modulated by both letter/flanker order and contiguity. However, when the flankers consisted of the target's inner-positioned letters alone, letter order no longer mattered. These findings suggest that readers may code for the relative position of letters using words' edges as spatial points of reference. We conclude that the flanker paradigm provides a fruitful means to investigate letter-position coding in the fovea and parafovea.

A developmental investigation of the first-letter advantage.

Skilled adult readers identify the first letter in a string of random consonants better than letters at any other position, and this advantage for the initial position is not seen with strings of symbols or familiar shapes. Here we examined the developmental trajectory of this first-letter advantage by testing children in Grades 1 to 5 of primary education in a target-in-string identification paradigm. Strings of five letters or five simple shapes were briefly presented, and children were asked to identify a target letter/shape at one of the five possible positions. Children responded by choosing between the target and an alternative that was a neighboring letter/shape (e.g., TPFMR-M vs. F at position 4). The serial position function linking accuracy to position-in-string was found to be affected by reading ability differently for letter stimuli compared with shape stimuli, and this was found to be almost entirely driven by differences in performance in identifying targets at the first position in strings. Here, accuracy increased more rapidly for letter stimuli than for shape stimuli as reading ability increased. This developmental pattern, plus the fact that letter strings were composed of random consonants and the task minimized the involvement of verbal recoding, allows us to exclude an explanation of the first-letter advantage in terms of serial reading strategies or phonological decoding. The findings suggest that the first-letter advantage is a function of, and a marker for, increasingly efficient orthographic processing.

Seeing the same words differently: the time course of automaticity and top-down intention in reading.

We investigated how linguistic intention affects the time course of visual word recognition by comparing the brain's electrophysiological response to a word's lexical frequency, a well-established psycholinguistic marker of lexical access, when participants actively retrieve the meaning of the written input (semantic categorization) versus a situation where no language processing is necessary (ink color categorization). In the semantic task, the ERPs elicited by high-frequency words started to diverge from those elicited by low-frequency words as early as 120 msec after stimulus onset. On the other hand, when categorizing the colored font of the very same words in the color task, word frequency did not modulate ERPs until some 100 msec later (220 msec poststimulus onset) and did so for a shorter period and with a smaller scalp distribution. The results demonstrate that, although written words indeed elicit automatic recognition processes in the brain, the speed and quality of lexical processing critically depends on the top-down intention to engage in a linguistic task.

Orthographic depth and its impact on universal predictors of reading: a cross-language investigation.

Alphabetic orthographies differ in the transparency of their letter-sound mappings, with English orthography being less transparent than other alphabetic scripts. The outlier status of English has led scientists to question the generality of findings based on English-language studies. We investigated the role of phonological awareness, memory, vocabulary, rapid naming, and nonverbal intelligence in reading performance across five languages lying at differing positions along a transparency continuum (Finnish, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, and French). Results from a sample of 1,265 children in Grade 2 showed that phonological awareness was the main factor associated with reading performance in each language. However, its impact was modulated by the transparency of the orthography, being stronger in less transparent orthographies. The influence of rapid naming was rather weak and limited to reading and decoding speed. Most predictors of reading performance were relatively universal across these alphabetic languages, although their precise weight varied systematically as a function of script transparency.

What's special about orthographic processing? Further evidence from transposition effects in same-different matching.

We sought evidence for letter-specific processing in the same-different matching task by comparing performance to random consonant strings and either strings of symbols (Experiment 1) or strings of digits (Experiment 2). The strings could be aligned horizontally or vertically, and on "different" response trials the to-be-matched strings could differ by the transposition of two adjacent characters or by the substitution of two adjacent characters. Making a "different" response was harder when the difference involved a transposition compared with a substitution-the transposition effect. Crucially, the transposition effect was significantly greater for letters than for symbols or digits when stimuli were aligned horizontally, but did not differ significantly across stimulus type with vertically aligned strings. These results suggest that it is processing specific to horizontally aligned letter strings, a reading-specific mechanism, that causes the greater transposition effects for letter stimuli in the same-different matching task when stimuli are arranged horizontally.

Integrating Orthographic Information Across Time and Space.

Research has suggested that the word recognition process is influenced by the integration of orthographic information across words. The precise nature of this integration process may vary, however, depending on whether words are in temporal or spatial proximity. Here we present a lexical decision experiment, designed to compare temporal and spatial integration processes more directly. Masked priming was used to reveal effects of temporal integration, while the flanker paradigm was used to reveal effects of spatial integration. Primes/flankers were high-frequency orthographic neighbors of the target (blue-blur) or unrelated control words (head-blur). We replicated prior observations of inhibition in trials where the neighbor was used as a masked prime, while facilitation was observed in trials where the neighbor was presented as flanker. We conclude that sub-lexical orthographic information is integrated both temporally and spatially, but that spatial information is used to segregate lexical representations activated by spatially distinct sources.

Asymmetrical switch costs in bilingual language production induced by reading words.

We examined language-switching effects in French-English bilinguals using a paradigm where pictures are always named in the same language (either French or English) within a block of trials, and on each trial, the picture is preceded by a printed word from the same language or from the other language. Participants had to either make a language decision on the word or categorize it as an animal name or not. Picture-naming latencies in French (Language 1 [L1]) were slower when pictures were preceded by an English word than by a French word, independently of the task performed on the word. There were no language-switching effects when pictures were named in English (L2). This pattern replicates asymmetrical switch costs found with the cued picture-naming paradigm and shows that the asymmetrical pattern can be obtained (a) in the absence of artificial (nonlinguistic) language cues, (b) when the switch involves a shift from comprehension in 1 language to production in another, and (c) when the naming language is blocked (univalent response). We concluded that language switch costs in bilinguals cannot be reduced to effects driven by task control or response-selection mechanisms.

Orthographic and phonological contributions to reading development: tracking developmental trajectories using masked priming.

The present study used a variant of masked priming to track the development of 2 marker effects of orthographic and phonological processing from Grade 1 through Grade 5 in a cross-sectional study. Pseudohomophone (PsH) priming served as a marker for phonological processing, whereas transposed-letter (TL) priming was a marker for coarse-grained orthographic processing. The results revealed a clear developmental picture. First, the PsH priming effect was significant and remained stable across development, suggesting that phonology not only plays an important role in early reading development but continues to exert a robust influence throughout reading development. This finding challenges the view that more advanced readers should rely less on phonological information than younger readers. Second, the TL priming effect increased monotonically with grade level and reading age, which suggests greater reliance on coarse-grained orthographic coding as children become better readers. Thus, TL priming effects seem to be a good marker effect for children's ability to use coarse-grained orthographic coding to speed up direct lexical access in alphabetic languages. The results were predicted by the dual-route model of orthographic processing, which suggests that direct orthographic access is achieved through coarse-grained orthographic coding that tolerates some degree of flexibility in letter order.

On coding the position of letters in words: a test of two models.

Open-bigram and spatial-coding schemes provide different accounts of how letter position is encoded by the brain during visual word recognition. Open-bigram coding involves an explicit representation of order based on letter pairs, while spatial coding involves a comparison function operating over representations of individual letters. We identify a set of priming conditions (subset primes and reversed interior primes) for which the two types of coding schemes give opposing predictions, hence providing the opportunity for strong scientific inference. Experimental results are consistent with the open-bigram account, and inconsistent with the spatial-coding scheme.

Literacy Affects Spoken Language in a Non-Linguistic Task: An ERP Study.

It is now commonly accepted that orthographic information influences spoken word recognition in a variety of laboratory tasks (lexical decision, semantic categorization, gender decision). However, it remains a hotly debated issue whether or not orthography would influence normal word perception in passive listening. That is, the argument has been made that orthography might only be activated in laboratory tasks that require lexical or semantic access in some form or another. It is possible that these rather "unnatural" tasks invite participants to use orthographic information in a strategic way to improve task performance. To put the strategy account to rest, we conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) study, in which participants were asked to detect a 500-ms-long noise burst that appeared on 25% of the trials (Go trials). In the NoGo trials, we presented spoken words that were orthographically consistent or inconsistent. Thus, lexical and/or semantic processing was not required in this task and there was no strategic benefit in computing orthography to perform this task. Nevertheless, despite the non-linguistic nature of the task, we replicated the consistency effect that has been previously reported in lexical decision and semantic tasks (i.e., inconsistent words produce more negative ERPs than consistent words as early as 300 ms after the onset of the spoken word). These results clearly suggest that orthography automatically influences word perception in normal listening even if there is no strategic benefit to do so. The results are explained in terms of orthographic restructuring of phonological representations.

Support systems for poor readers: empirical data from six EU member states.

This study surveyed and compared support systems for poor readers in six member states of the European Union (EU). The goal was to identify features of effective support systems. A large-scale questionnaire survey was conducted among mainstream teachers (n = 4,210) and remedial teachers (n = 2,395). Results indicate that the six support systems differed substantially, with effective support systems showing high performance on all variables measured. More specifically, effective support systems were characterized by (a) high levels of both teacher and student support and (b) frequent interactions between teachers and remedial teachers as well as between remedial teachers and diagnosticians. The high prevalence of poor reading ability in the current EU member states demonstrates that educational reforms are critically needed. The results of this study provide concrete starting points for improving support systems for poor readers.