The effects of spacing and massing on children's orthographic learning.

Despite substantial evidence that spacing study opportunities over time improves the retention of learned verbal material compared with study trials that occur consecutively, the influence of temporal spacing on children's learning of written words has not been investigated. This experiment examined whether temporal spacing influenced Grade 3 and 4 children's (N = 37; mean age = 8 years 7 months) learning of novel written words during independent reading compared with massing. Children read 16 sentences containing a novel word under either a spaced (sentences appeared once in each of four blocks) or massed conditions (four consecutive trials). After a delay, orthographic learning was assessed using recognition (orthographic choice) and recall (spelling to dictation) measures. Words experienced in the spaced condition were better recognized than those in the massed condition, but there was no effect on recall. These findings suggest that temporal spacing influences the acquisition of new written word forms, extending the potential utility of the spacing principle to reading acquisition.

Tracking the evolution of orthographic expectancies over building visual experience.

Literate children can generate expectations about the spellings of newly learned words that they have not yet seen in print. These initial spelling expectations, or orthographic skeletons, have previously been observed at the first orthographic exposure to known spoken words. Here, we asked what happens to the orthographic skeleton over repeated visual exposures. Children in Grade 4 (N = 38) were taught the pronunciations and meanings of one set of 16 novel words, whereas another set were untrained. Spellings of half the items were predictable from their phonology (e.g., nesh), whereas the other half were less predictable (e.g., koyb). Trained and untrained items were subsequently shown in print, embedded in sentences, and eye movements were monitored as children silently read all items over three exposures. A larger effect of spelling predictability for orally trained items compared with untrained items was observed at the first and second orthographic exposures, consistent with the notion that oral vocabulary knowledge had facilitated the formation of spelling expectations. By the third orthographic exposure, this interaction was no longer significant, suggesting that visual experience had begun to update children's spelling expectations. Delayed follow-up testing revealed that when visual exposure was equated, oral training provided a strong persisting benefit to children's written word recognition. Findings suggest that visual exposure can alter children's developing orthographic representations and that this process can be captured dynamically as children read novel words over repeated visual exposures.

Children reading spoken words: interactions between vocabulary and orthographic expectancy.

There is an established association between children's oral vocabulary and their word reading but its basis is not well understood. Here, we present evidence from eye movements for a novel mechanism underlying this association. Two groups of 18 Grade 4 children received oral vocabulary training on one set of 16 novel words (e.g., 'nesh', 'coib'), but no training on another set. The words were assigned spellings that were either predictable from phonology (e.g., nesh) or unpredictable (e.g., koyb). These were subsequently shown in print, embedded in sentences. Reading times were shorter for orally familiar than unfamiliar items, and for words with predictable than unpredictable spellings but, importantly, there was an interaction between the two: children demonstrated a larger benefit of oral familiarity for predictable than for unpredictable items. These findings indicate that children form initial orthographic expectations about spoken words before first seeing them in print. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/jvpJwpKMM3E.

Elaborative encoding through self-generation enhances outcomes with errorless learning: Findings from the Skypekids memory study.

Errorless learning has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of memory impairment in adults and older adults with acquired brain injury. In the same population, use of elaborative encoding through supported self-generation in errorless paradigms has been shown to further enhance memory performance. However, the evidence base relevant to application of both standard and self-generation forms of errorless learning in children is far weaker. We address this limitation in the present study to examine recall performance in children with brain injury (n = 16) who were taught novel age-appropriate science and social science facts through the medium of Skype. All participants were taught these facts under conditions of standard errorless learning, errorless learning with self-generation, and trial-and-error learning after which memory was tested at 5-minute, 30-minute, 1-hour and 24-hour delays. Analysis revealed no main effect of time, with participants retaining most information acquired over the 24-hour testing period, but a significant effect of condition. Notably, self-generation proved more effective than both standard errorless and trial-and-error learning. Further analysis of the data revealed that severity of attentional impairment was less detrimental to recall performance under errorless conditions. This study extends the literature to provide further evidence of the value of errorless learning methods in children with ABI and the first demonstration of the effectiveness of self-generation when delivered via the Internet.

Acquisition of orthographic forms via spoken complex word training.

This study used a novel word-training paradigm to examine the integration of spoken word knowledge when learning to read morphologically complex novel words. Australian primary school children including Grades 3-5 were taught the oral form of a set of novel morphologically complex words (e.g., (/vɪbɪŋ/, /vɪbd/, /vɪbz/), with a second set serving as untrained items. Following oral training, participants saw the printed form of the novel word stems for the first time (e.g., vib), embedded in sentences, while their eye movements were monitored. Half of the stems were spelled predictably and half were spelled unpredictably. Reading times were shorter for orally trained stems with predictable than unpredictable spellings and this difference was greater for trained than untrained items. These findings suggest that children were able to form robust orthographic expectations of the embedded morphemic stems during spoken word learning, which may have occurred automatically without any explicit control of the applied mappings, despite still being in the early stages of reading development. Following the sentence reading task, children completed a reading-aloud task where they were exposed to the novel orthographic forms for a second time. The findings are discussed in the context of theories of reading acquisition.

The effect of oral vocabulary training on reading novel complex words.

Do readers benefit from their knowledge of the phonological form and meaning of stems when seeing them embedded in morphologically complex words for the first time in print? This question was addressed using a word learning paradigm. Participants were trained on novel spoken word stems and their meanings ("tump"). Following training, participants then saw the novel stems for the first time in print, either in combination with a real affix (tumpist, tumpor) or with a non-affix (tumpel, tumpain). Untrained items were also included to test whether the affix effect was modulated by the prior training of the spoken word stems. First, the complex words were embedded in meaningful sentences which participants read as their eye movements were recorded (first orthographic exposure). Second, participants were asked to read aloud and spell each individual complex novel word (second orthographic exposure). Participants spent less time fixating on words that included trained stems compared with untrained stems. However, the training effect did not change depending on whether stems were accompanied by a real affix or a non-affix. In the reading aloud and spelling tasks, there was no effect of training, suggesting that the effect of oral vocabulary training did not extend beyond the initial print exposure. The results indicate that familiarity with spoken stems influences how complex words containing those stems are processed when being read for the first time. Our findings highlight the flexibility and adaptability of the morphological processing system to novel complex words during the first print exposure.

Learning morphologically complex spoken words: Orthographic expectations of embedded stems are formed prior to print exposure.

It is well known that information from spoken language is integrated into reading processes, but the nature of these links and how they are acquired is less well understood. Recent evidence has suggested that predictions about the written form of newly learned spoken words are already generated prior to print exposure. We extend this work to morphologically complex words and ask whether the information that is available in spoken words goes beyond the mappings between phonology and orthography. Adults were taught the oral form of a set of novel morphologically complex words (e.g., "neshing", "neshed", "neshes"), with a 2nd set serving as untrained items. Following oral training, participants saw the printed form of the novel word stems for the first time (e.g., nesh), embedded in sentences, and their eye movements were monitored. Half of the stems were allocated a predictable and half an unpredictable spelling. Reading times were shorter for orally trained than untrained stems and for stems with predictable rather than unpredictable spellings. Crucially, there was an interaction between spelling predictability and training. This suggests that orthographic expectations of embedded stems are formed during spoken word learning. Reading aloud and spelling tests complemented the eye movement data, and findings are discussed in the context of theories of reading acquisition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Precision of synesthetic color matching resembles that for recollected colors rather than physical colors.

Grapheme-color synesthesia is an atypical condition in which individuals experience sensations of color when reading printed graphemes such as letters and digits. For some grapheme-color synesthetes, seeing a printed grapheme triggers a sensation of color, but hearing the name of a grapheme does not. This dissociation allowed us to compare the precision with which synesthetes are able to match their color experiences triggered by visible graphemes, with the precision of their matches for recalled colors based on the same graphemes spoken aloud. In six synesthetes, color matching for printed graphemes was equally variable relative to recalled experiences. In a control experiment, synesthetes and age-matched controls either matched the color of a circular patch while it was visible on a screen, or they judged its color from memory after it had disappeared. Both synesthetes and controls were more variable when matching from memory, and the variance of synesthetes' recalled color judgments matched that associated with their synesthetic judgments for visible graphemes in the first experiment. Results suggest that synesthetic experiences of color triggered by achromatic graphemes are analogous to recollections of color.

Relative contributions of psychiatric symptoms and neuropsychological functioning to quality of life in first-episode psychosis.

OBJECTIVE: To report on the relationship between quality of life (QOL), psychiatric symptoms and neuropsychological functioning in a sample of young people who have experienced a first episode of psychosis 2-3 years following initial presentation. METHOD: Fifty-one participants aged 15-27 years old completed the short form of the World Health Organization Quality of Life scale (WHOQOL-Bref), a self-report instrument assessing physical, psychological, social and environmental aspects of QOL. A comprehensive neuropsychological battery was administered. Measures of psychiatric symptoms including depression (as assessed by the Calgary Depression Scale), positive, negative and general psychopathology (as assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) were obtained. RESULTS: Multiple regression analyses were used to evaluate the ability of neuropsychological measures and psychiatric symptoms to predict QOL. When neuropsychological variables were considered on their own, cognitive flexibility, verbal fluency, verbal ability and sustained attention explained up to 28% of the variance in the four domains of QOL. However, in the presence of psychiatric symptoms, neuropsychological variables were no longer significant predictors for physical and psychological QOL; depression, general psychopathology and negative symptoms together explained up to 43% of the variance in QOL, with neuropsychological variables remaining significant for social and environmental QOL. CONCLUSIONS: In young people with their first episode of psychosis, QOL is more strongly related to levels of psychopathology, particularly depression, than neuropsychological deficits. This finding replicates previous studies in chronic schizophrenia that have suggested QOL is more strongly related to levels of psychopathology than the presence of neuropsychological deficits.