Visual and orthographic processing in Arabic word recognition among dyslexic and typical readers

Attentional shifting and the role of the dorsal pathway in visual word recognition

N-gram language models and lexicon-based word-recognition are popular methods in the literature to improve recognition accuracies of online and offline handwritten data. However, there are very few works that deal with application of these techniques on online Tamil handwritten data. In this paper, we explore methods of developing symbol-level language models and a lexicon from a large Tamil text corpus and their application to improving symbol and word recognition accuracies. On a test database of around 2000 words, we find that bigram language models improve symbol (3%) and word recognition (8%) accuracies and while lexicon methods offer much greater improvements (30%) in terms of word recognition, there is a large dependency on choosing the right lexicon. For comparison to lexicon and language model based methods, we have also explored re-evaluation techniques which involve the use of expert classifiers to improve symbol and word recognition accuracies.

Influences of phonological awareness and naming speed on the speed and accuracy of Dutch children's word recognition were investigated in a longitudinal study. The speed and accuracy of word recognition at the ends of Grades 1 and 2 were predicted by naming speed from both the beginning and end of Grade 1, after control for autoregressive relations, kindergarten letter knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge. Phonological awareness at the beginning of Grade 1 predicted only the accuracy of word recognition at the end of Grade 1. No evidence was found for reciprocal influences of word recognition skills on later phonological awareness or naming speed.

This study investigated word identification inArabic and basic cognitive processes inreading-disabled (RD) and normal readers of thesame chronological age, and in younger normalreaders at the same reading level. The studyfocused on the word identification processes ofphonological decoding and orthographicprocessing and the cognitive processes ofsyntactic and morphological awareness, workingmemory, and visual processing. RD children werecompared with normal readers on a battery oftests developed in Arabic on the basis of thoseavailable in English and Hebrew. The presentresults revealed deficiencies among the RD childrenin phonological decoding, in contrast torelative strengths in orthographic processing. These data were consistent with English-languagefindings. The analysis of basiccognitive processes indicated significantdeficiencies in morphology, working memory, andsyntactic and visual processing, with the mostsevere deficiencies observed for phonologicalawareness. The results are discussed in lightof international RD findings and the nature ofArabic orthography.

The role of rapid naming in reading development and dyslexia in Chinese

Repeated reading for developing reading fluency and reading comprehension: The case of EFL learners in Vietnam

This study investigates the processing consequences of letter connectedness during Arabic visual word recognition. Specifically, this study examined (a) whether there is a processing cost associated with letter connectedness during word-level reading and (b) whether this factor modulates form-level activation among words during lexical access. Experiment 1 tested one-, two-, and three-chunk Arabic words and nonwords in a lexical decision task with masked identity priming. Experiment 2 tested the same stimuli in a lexical decision task with masked form priming, in which prime-target pairs differed by a letter associated with the morphological root. In both experiments, there was a clear processing cost for letter connectedness-one-chunk words had longer processing times than two-chunk words, which had longer processing times than three-chunk words. Comparable processing time differences were also found for nonwords, suggesting that letter connectedness influences Arabic word recognition at a prelexical orthographic processing stage. Furthermore, although reliable priming was found in both the experiments, there was a suggestion that letter connectedness modulated form priming effects (Experiment 2), with the strongest effect for three-chunk word targets. These findings are taken to indicate that letter connectedness is an important factor that should be considered-and controlled for-in examinations of Arabic visual word recognition.

Handwriting serves to link auditory and motor routines with visual word processing, which is a hallmark of successful reading. The current study aims to explore the effect of multisensory integration as a pathway to neural specialization for print among typical and dyslexic readers across writing systems. We identified 9–10-year-old dyslexic Chinese children (n = 24) and their typically developing counterparts (n = 24) on whom we conducted both behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments. We designed four learning conditions: Handwriting Chinese (HC), Viewing Chinese (VC), Drawing followed by Character Recognition in Chinese (D-C), and Drawing followed by Word Recognition in English (D-E). In both handwriting and drawing conditions, we also designed curved vs. straight-line stimuli. Both behavioral and EEG results showed that handwriting straight line strokes facilitated visual word recognition in Chinese compared to handwriting curved lines. Handwriting conditions resulted in a lateralization of the N170 in typical readers, but not the dyslexic readers. Interestingly, drawing curved lines facilitate word recognition in English among dyslexic readers. Taken together, the results of the study suggest benefits of handwriting on the neural processing and behavioral performance in response to Chinese character recognition and curved-line drawing effects on English word recognition among dyslexic readers. But the lack of handwriting effects in dyslexic readers suggest that students who have deficits in reading may also be missing the link between multisensory integration and word recognition in the visual word form areas. The current study results have implications for maintaining handwriting practices to promote perception and motor integration for visual word form area development for normal readers and suggest that drawing practices might benefit Chinese dyslexic readers in reading English.

Fluent contextual reading is associated with greater synchronization of the visual and auditory networks, fluent reading and better speed of processing in children with dyslexia

Two issues were investigated: the first examined the relationships among accuracy and latency of word recognition and comprehension by non-fluent readers, and the second examined whether component letter or holistic processing was used in word recognition by these same readers. Speed and accuracy of word recognition were measured on individual words. Literal comprehension was measured for the same words presented in meaningful context. The unit of perception was measured by the relationship between latency of word recognition and word length. If students were using component processing, latency would increase with word length, but if holistic processing were used, there would be no increase in latency with length. Results of this study indicated that accuracy and latency were each significantly related to comprehension for both first- and second-grade words, with evidence for latency influencing comprehension scores to a greater extent on the first-grade words. With regard to the unit of perception, in general there was evidence of component letter processing for all subjects with the highly accurate readers showing a tendency towards more holistic processing.

Over the past decade, one of the central topics studied in the research in first language (Ll) vocabulary and reading has been the processes that readers use in word decoding and word recognition. This area of investigation is important because it has been shown that perceiving and comprehending already known words in a text is one factor that leads to successful reading comprehension and speed (Walker, 1983). Readers are able to understand the meanings of new and unfamiliar words through a combination of contextual clues (Palmberg, 1987), schemata (Parry, 1987), and morphological clues afforded by cognates, word families and word formation (Tyler & Nagy, 1989). However, if second language (L2) readers are handicapped by slower or less accurate word decoding and recognition processing strategies, it will be more difficult for them to integrate contextual clues into an understanding of the unknown words. This has been found to be true even if the word's meaning is explicitly presented in the text (Haynes & Carr, 1990).Aspecific complication in word decoding and recognition research is that we do not yet know whether the processes used in all languages are similar, and whether speakers of English as a second language (ESL) transfer their L1 decoding strategies when reading in their second language. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the word decoding strategies used in reading English by advanced non-native speakers whose L1 is Finnish, and compare their strategies with those used by native English speakers.

This article first presents a conception of word recognition involving both phonological and orthographic processes. Three different explanations about the origin of orthographic processes in word recognition are then discussed. These explanations are: (1) differences in orthographic memory, (2) differences in phonological processes and (3) differences in leisure time reading. In accord with the third explanation, it is argued that automatic orthographic word recognition is directly dependent on children's amount of reading practice in an out‐of‐school setting. Educational implications of this emphasis on leisure time reading effects are also discussed.

There has been a general consensus that readers develop different cognitive mechanisms in response to linguistic properties of languages and writing systems in which they read, and that processing capacities acquired in the first language (L1) may transfer to reading in another language. However, findings from developmental studies are substantially mixed. To address the conflicting results, this study examined an English word recognition trajectory in L1-Japanese secondary school students from Grade 9 to 11 using a longitudinal research design and observing the relative contribution of orthographic and phonological processing to word recognition. Contrary to the developmental trend in L1-English readers, the significant predictor of word recognition was orthographic processing in lower grades and phonological processing in Grade 11, suggesting the different developmental pathway between L1 and L2 word recognition for the readers of multi-script Japanese.

Copyright © 2014 ISCA.Previous work has shown that both the speed and accuracy of word recognition can be reduced if a talker has a regional or non-native accent, particularly under noisy conditions. This study investigated whether the reduced intelligibility of some accents in noise are related to aspects of speech processing in quiet. Our goal was to see if difficulties processing accented speech under adverse listening conditions can be revealed in quiet using electrophysiological methods. Participants heard English sentences in a standard, regional or non-native accent. Behavioural measures found listeners had a strong intelligibility advantage for the standard accent when mixed with noise, replicating previous work. However, differences in processing the accents were less clear using the EEG measures. We found a significant Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN) elicited by phonological anomalies, as well as an N400 effect, which is related to semantic anomalies, but although both responses were somewhat larger for the standard accent, there was more overlap in the EEG responses for different accents than for speech-in-noise recognition. More work is needed, but it is plausible that some of the difficulty that listeners have with accents under noise may be related to the same accent processing difficulties that occur in quiet.

Many previous eye-tracking studies were conducted to examine how adult readers process different written languages. Relatively, only few eye-tracking studies have been conducted to observe the reading process of Arab children. This study investigated the influence of orthographic regularity on Saudi elementary grades’ English and Arabic words recognition. The eye movements of 15 grade-four students and 15 grade-six students were recorded while they read words that differ in frequency and regularity. Analysis of the visual information from the word-recognition process shows differences in the students’ eye movements for the two languages. There were statistically significant differences in the total fixation duration and fixation count between the two languages and between both groups. All the students showed longer processing time for English sentences than Arabic ones. However, Arabic-speaking students were influenced by English orthography with more processing difficulty for English irregular words. The visual information shows that more cross-linguistic differences are found in grade-four students’ results. Grade-four students transferred their first language (L1) reading strategies to read English words; however, Arabic reading methods cannot be effectively applied to reading irregular orthographies like English. This explains the increased eye-movement measurements of grade-four students compared to grade-six students, who fixated more on unfamiliar English words. Although orthographic regularity had a major effect on the word-recognition process in this study, the development of the students’ Arabic and English orthographic knowledge affected the progress of their visual word recognition across the two levels.