Reading Aloud: Discrete Stage(s) Redux.

Serje Robidoux,Derek Besner

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00218

Abstract

Interactive activation accounts of processing have had a broad and deep influence on cognitive psychology, particularly so in the context of computational accounts of reading aloud at the single word level. Here we address the issue of whether such a framework can simulate the joint effects of stimulus quality and word frequency (which have been shown to produce both additive and interactive effects depending on the context). We extend previous work on this question by considering an alternative implementation of a stimulus quality manipulation, and the role of interactive activation. Simulations with a version of the Dual Route Cascaded model (a model with interactive activation dynamics along the lexical route) demonstrate that the model is unable to simulate the entire pattern seen in human performance. We discuss how a hybrid interactive activation model that includes some context dependent staged processing could accommodate these data.

Highlights

In the cognitive psychology of reading there remain several unresolved debates around fundamental issues
Since here we are concerned with two way interactions, three-way interactions, and the four-way interaction of stimulus quality, word frequency, presence/absence of interactive activation, and
It is unlikely that the field at large will embrace such an account, given that (a) many psycholinguists are resistant to the idea of discrete processes, so in the context of reading aloud, and (b) such a hybrid account complicates matters considerably

Summary

Introduction

In the cognitive psychology of reading there remain several unresolved debates around fundamental issues. Two of these are of particular importance to the major theoretical accounts. One concerns how knowledge is represented in the reading system (distributed vs localist), while the second concerns how various levels communicate with each other (the processing dynamics). We are concerned with the question of processing dynamics in major localist computational accounts of reading aloud. In theories of reading aloud, the discrete stages view has given way to the notion of cascaded processing, and to interactive activation as championed by McClelland (1979, 1987)

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Conclusion