Abstract
Many studies have established a link between phonological abilities (indexed by phonological awareness and phonological memory tasks) and typical and atypical reading development. Individuals who perform poorly on phonological assessments have been mostly assumed to have underspecified (or "fuzzy") phonological representations, with typical phonemic categories, but with greater category overlap due to imprecise encoding. An alternative posits that poor readers have overspecified phonological representations, with speech sounds perceived allophonically (phonetically distinct variants of a single phonemic category). On both accounts, mismatch between phonological categories and orthography leads to reading difficulty. Here, we consider the implications of these accounts for online speech processing. We used eye tracking and an individual differences approach to assess sensitivity to subphonemic detail in a community sample of young adults with a wide range of reading-related skills. Subphonemic sensitivity inversely correlated with meta-phonological task performance, consistent with overspecification.
Highlights
IntroductionMany studies have established a link between phonological abilities (indexed by phonological awareness and phonological memory tasks) and typical and atypical reading development
Many studies have established a link between phonological abilities and typical and atypical reading development
Individual differences in subphonemic sensitivity during spoken word recognition and in standardized phonological performance tasks suggest that lower phonological skills are associated with higher subphonemic sensitivity, indicating overspecified phonological representations
Summary
Many studies have established a link between phonological abilities (indexed by phonological awareness and phonological memory tasks) and typical and atypical reading development. An alternative posits that poor readers have overspecified phonological representations, with speech sounds perceived allophonically (phonetically distinct variants of a single phonemic category). On both accounts, mismatch between phonological categories and orthography leads to reading difficulty. A range of phonological and meta-phonological capacities have well-established associations with reading ability and reading acquisition, including phonological awareness Given the importance of phonological capacities to the attainment of reading skills, and the relevance of other factors notwithstanding, our goal in this paper is to better understand the nature of meta-phonological skills differences implicated in variation in reading ability
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