Orthographic Effects Research Articles

Children's and adults' parafoveal processes in German: Phonological and orthographic effects

Phonological and orthographic information has been shown to play an important role in parafoveal processing in skilled adult reading in English. In the present study, we investigated whether similar parafoveal effects can be found in children using the boundary eye tracking method. Children and adults read sentences in German with embedded target nouns which were presented in original, pseudohomophone (PsH), transposed-letter (TL), lower-case and control conditions to assess phonological and orthographic preview effects. We found evidence of PsH preview benefit effects for children. We also found TL preview benefit effects for adults, while children only showed these effects under specific conditions. Results are consistent with the developmental view that reading initially depends on phonological processes and that orthographic processes become increasingly important.

Effects of orthographic forms on pronunciation in experienced instructed second language learners

ABSTRACTIn spite of burgeoning evidence that the orthographic forms (“spellings”) of second language (L2) words affect L2 learners’ pronunciation, little is known about the pronunciation of known words in experienced learners. In a series of four studies, we investigated various orthographic effects on the pronunciation of L2 English words in instructed learners with 10 years’ experience of learning English. Participants were native users of the phonologically transparent Italian writing system. Study 1 investigated the pronunciation of “silent letters,” using a word-reading task and a word-repetition task. Study 2 examined the effects of vowel spelling on vowel duration, namely, whether L2 speakers produce the same target vowel as longer when it is spelled with a vowel digraph than with a singleton letter. Study 3 explored the effects of the morphemic spelling of the past tense marker <ed> using a verb paradigm-production task. Study 4 tested whether L2 speakers produce homophonic words differently when they are spelled differently. Results confirmed that orthographic forms affect experienced instructed learners’ pronunciation of known words, albeit less so in immediate word repetition than in reading-aloud tasks.

The interaction of acoustic and orthographic input in the acquisition of Spanish assibilated/fricative rhotics

ABSTRACTThere is growing evidence that exposure to orthographic input affects second language phonological acquisition. This study examined the effects of auditory–orthographic interactions on second language assibilated/fricative rhotic productions of 20 naive English speakers of Spanish, with an acoustic–phonetic approach. The participants were assigned to two groups: auditory-only and auditory–orthographic. The results were indicative of a higher rate of both assibilated/fricative rhotics and approximant rhotics in the auditory–orthographic group. In addition, there was evidence that the acoustic input modulated the orthographic effects. However, the auditory-only group produced a higher rate of postalveolar sibilants. These results will be discussed in terms of (a) the salience-enhancing effect of the grapheme <r> and (b) the overriding effect of orthography.

FENÓMENOS DE REDUCCIÓN VOCÁLICA POR HABLANTES COLOMBIANOS DE INGLÉS COMO L2: UN ESTUDIO ACÚSTICO

This study assessed the performances of a group of speakers of L2 English when perceiving and producing the English vowel Schwa. It evaluated the hypotheses proposed by the Speech Learning Model (SML), developed by Flege and colleagues (1988, 1992, 1999, and 2002), which suggest that L2 speakers are capable of creating phonetic categories for new L2 sounds. The effect of orthography was chosen as a variable that could affect L2 speakers’ abilities. The study was carried out in three stages: the first one evaluated initial L2 speakers’ perceptual and productive abilities; stage two consisted of pronunciation training in vowel reduction processes; and stage three evaluated performances after training. Results suggest that Second Language (L2) speakers were influenced by the orthography; therefore, they perceived and produced Schwas as instances of their native vowels.

The role of orthography in (apparent) L2 dialect acquisition

This paper investigates the role of orthographic representation in the production of the local variant of the STRUT vowel in the speech of Polish migrants living in Manchester. A previous study (Drummond 2013) showed that acquisition of the local variant depended on various social factors, yet this only took into account conversation data, leaving some word list data unexplored. Comparing the two data sets reveals a difference in degree of acquisition, with the word list data producing more of the local vowel. This is explained not as a case of dialect acquisition as such, but more as an effect of orthography triggering a connection to the L1 phonology, the particular nature of which mimics acquisition of the local variant.

Effects of orthography on semantic impression of onomatopeic words

Effects of orthography on semantic impression of onomatopeic words

Effect of orthography over neural regions in bilinguals: A view from neuroimaging

Effects of written script processing on neural regions have been explored using fMRI in a group of bilingual population that has not so far been studied, namely, Urdu–Hindi skilled bilinguals. Hindi and Urdu languages are very similar at the spoken level but differ greatly in scripts; Hindi is a highly transparent script, whereas Urdu is more opaque. The common regions (conjunction analyses) observed for Urdu–Hindi bilingual readers are left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (BA 44/45), bilateral middle temporal (BA 22), left fusiform gyrus (BA 37) and bilateral middle occipital regions. The distinct regions for Urdu words were found in left superior frontal and left middle frontal regions whereas; no distinct region was found for Hindi words. Imaging result suggests that middle and superior frontal regions are crucial for the orthography and graphemic complexity of Urdu script.

Orthographic Effects in Auditory Rhyme Decisions in Children

An experiment is reported that examined the relationship between phonology and orthography in the auditory rhyme decision task in children. It is investigated how the spelling of a word affects rhyme decisions, which can be done only on the basis of phonological information. Young children revealed the orthographic facilitation and inhibition effects even when subsequent spelling tests showed that for some words the children only had an implicit knowledge about the words’ spellings and were not yet able to produce explicitly their correct spelling. Older children have the same automatic processes as adults: they activate orthographic information and are faster to decide that two spoken words rhyme when these are spelled similarly than dissimilarly, and are slower to decide that two words do not rhyme if these are spelled similarly than dissimilarly.

Effects of Orthography on Word recognition process of Onomatopeic Words

Effects of Orthography on Word recognition process of Onomatopeic Words

How does reading performance modulate the impact of orthographic knowledge on speech processing? A comparison of normal readers and dyslexic adults

Studies on proficient readers showed that speech processing is affected by knowledge of the orthographic code. Yet, the automaticity of the orthographic influence depends on task demand. Here, we addressed this automaticity issue in normal and dyslexic adult readers by comparing the orthographic effects obtained in two speech processing tasks that are or not sensitive to strategies developed by participants. Our finding showed that while participants' performance in a metaphonological task, which is known to be strategy prone, was affected by their orthographic knowledge regardless of the childhood diagnosis of dyslexia or of their actual reading-related skills, this latter factor significantly modulated the orthographic influence found in a more natural speech recognition task. The finding supports the claim that while any individuals who know a reading code are able to resort to their orthographic knowledge when they process speech, a more profound modification of the speech processing system by the orthographic code takes place only in readers who have reached a certain level of reading expertise.

The role of orthographic information in the learning of allophonic variation

Exposure to L2 orthography may facilitate learning a novel vocalic (e.g., Escudero et al., 2008) or tonal (Showalter and Hayes-Harb, 2013) L2 contrast. Yet it is unclear whether the benefit of orthographic information applies to the learning of L2 words involving allophonic variants. We investigated whether exposure to L2 orthography can help L2 learners establish a single lexical representation for words containing allophones. We used an invented language, with word-pairs of free variants (test condition) involving the vowel alternation [ɔ]-[u], both of which can be spelled as <o>. In the control condition, vowel alternation [e]-[a] contrasted word meanings. In a word learning experiment, Mandarin and American English speakers were presented with words paired with pictures. In addition, one subgroup of participants saw the spellings when they heard the words, while another did not. Then, in a picture-auditory word matching task, participants who learned that the variants were allophonic were expected to link the two variants to one single picture in the test condition only, not in the control. A facilitative effect of orthography on the learning of free variation was observed for Mandarin speakers. This shows that orthography may help L2 learners establish a single lexical representation for allophonic variants.

Learning words in a new language: Orthography doesn't always help

Previous studies have shown that orthography is activated during speech processing and that it may have positive and negative effects for non-native listeners. The present study examines whether the effect of orthography on non-native word learning depends on the relationship between the grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the native and non-native orthographic systems. Specifically, congruence between grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the listeners’ languages is predicted to aid word recognition, while incongruence is predicted to hinder it. Native Spanish listeners who were Dutch learners or naïve listeners (with no exposure to Dutch) were taught Dutch pseudowords and their visual referents. They were trained with only auditory forms or with auditory and orthographic forms. During testing, non-native listeners were less accurate when the target and distractor pseudowords formed a minimal pair (differing in only one vowel) than when they formed a non-minimal pair, and performed better on perceptually easy than on perceptually difficult minimal pairs. For perceptually difficult minimal pairs, Dutch learners performed better than naïve listeners and Dutch proficiency predicted learners’ word recognition accuracy. Most importantly and as predicted, exposure to orthographic forms during training aided performance on minimal pairs with congruent orthography, while it hindered performance on minimal pairs with incongruent orthography.

Orthographic Neighborhood-Size Effects on the Reading Aloud of Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia

This study examines the effects of orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) in relationship with word frequency on the reading aloud of children with and without dyslexia whose language has a consistent orthography. Participants included 22 Italian fourth-grade children with dyslexia and 44 age-matched typically developing readers. Children with dyslexia read low-frequency words with high N-size faster than words that had no neighbors; by contrast, typically developing readers showed no N-size effects, irrespective of word frequency. The facilitating effect of N-size on low-frequency word reading in children with dyslexia indicates that they benefit from lexical activation spreading from dense neighborhoods.

Orthography-induced transfer in the production of English-speaking learners of Spanish

This article reports on a study on the effect of orthography on L1-based phonological transfer in L2 production in 40 novice English-speaking learners of Spanish. In particular, the role of auditory-orthographic training and production and the influence of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences are examined. Data elicited via a picture-naming task reveal a robust effect of orthography on phonological transfer leading to non-target-like productions at the very beginning stages of second language acquisition. There is also strong evidence that condition of training and production as well as the type of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence determine the quantity of transfer. The difference in the quantity of transfer between the individual grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences is explained in light of salience and frequency effects. Pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Because trucks aren’t bicycles: orthographic complexity as an important variable in reading research

Severe enduring reading- and writing-accuracy difficulties seem a phenomenon largely restricted to nations using complex orthographies, notably Anglophone nations, given English’s highly complex orthography (Geva and Siegel, Read Writ 12:1–30, 2000; Landerl et al., Cognition 63:315–334, 1997; Share, Psychol Bull 134(4):584–615, 2008; Torgesen and Davis, J Exp Child Psychol 63:1–21, 1996; Vellutino, J Learn Disabil 33(3):223, 2000). They seem rare in transparent orthography nations such as Finland, which use highly regular spelling and few spelling rules beyond letter sounds, and most children read and write with impressive accuracy by the end of Year 1 (Holopainen et al., J Learn Disabil 34(5):401–413, 2001; Seymour et al., Br J Psychol 94:143–174, 2003; Spencer and Hanley, Br J Psychol 94(1):1–29, 2003; J Res Read 27(1):1–14, 2004). Orthographic complexity has strong and diverse impacts on reading, writing and academic development (Aro, Learning to read: The effect of orthography, 2004; Galletly and Knight, Aust J Learn Disabil 9(4):4–11, 2004; Aust Educ Res 38(3):329–354, 2011). Despite these strong effects, orthographic complexity is rarely included as a variable in reading research studies considering evidence from both Anglophone (complex orthography) and transparent-orthography readers, or included in discussion of factors influencing results. This paper discusses the differences in reading-accuracy development and difficulties evidenced in studies of Anglophone (complex-orthography) and transparent-orthography readers. It then explores instances of orthographic complexity not being considered in studies where it may have impacted results. This disregarding of orthographic complexity as a variable in research studies appears an oversight, one likely to be contributing to continuing confusion on many aspects of reading and writing development in both healthy- and low-progress readers. Needs for research in these areas are discussed.

A Computational and Empirical Investigation of Graphemes in Reading

It is often assumed that graphemes are a crucial level of orthographic representation above letters. Current connectionist models of reading, however, do not address how the mapping from letters to graphemes is learned. One major challenge for computational modeling is therefore developing a model that learns this mapping and can assign the graphemes to linguistically meaningful categories such as the onset, vowel, and coda of a syllable. Here, we present a model that learns to do this in English for strings of any letter length and any number of syllables. The model is evaluated on error rates and further validated on the results of a behavioral experiment designed to examine ambiguities in the processing of graphemes. The results show that the model (a) chooses graphemes from letter strings with a high level of accuracy, even when trained on only a small portion of the English lexicon; (b) chooses a similar set of graphemes as people do in situations where different graphemes can potentially be selected; (c) predicts orthographic effects on segmentation which are found in human data; and (d) can be readily integrated into a full-blown model of multi-syllabic reading aloud such as CDP++ (Perry, Ziegler, & Zorzi, 2010). Altogether, these results suggest that the model provides a plausible hypothesis for the kind of computations that underlie the use of graphemes in skilled reading.

Effects of rhyme and spelling patterns on auditory word ERPs depend on selective attention to phonology

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that directed selective attention either to sub-syllabic phonology (i.e., rhyme judgments) or to melodies embedded within the words. ERPs elicited when participants selectively attended to phonology demonstrated a rhyming effect that was concurrent with online stimulus encoding and an orthographic effect that emerged later. ERP responses to the same stimuli presented under melodic focus, however, showed no evidence of sensitivity to rhyme or spelling patterns. Results reveal limitations to the automaticity of such ERP effects, suggesting that rhyme effects may depend, at least to some degree, on allocation of attention to phonology, which may in turn activate task-incidental orthographic information.

THE RECOGNITION OF SPOKEN MONO-MORPHEMIC COMPOUNDS IN CHINESE

This paper explores the auditory lexical access of mono-morphemic compounds in Chinese as a way of understanding the role of orthography in the recognition of spoken words. In traditional Chinese linguistics, a compound is a word written with two or more characters whether or not they are morphemic. A monomorphemic compound may either be a binding word, written with characters that only appear in this one word, or a non-binding word, written with characters that are chosen for their pronunciation but that also appear in other words. Our goal was to determine if this purely orthographic difference affects auditory lexical access by conducting a series of four experiments with materials matched by whole-word frequency, syllable frequency, cross-syllable predictability, cohort size, and acoustic duration, but differing in binding. An auditory lexical decision task (LDT) found an orthographic effect: binding words were recognized more quickly than non-binding words. However, this effect disappeared in an auditory repetition and in a visual LDT with the same materials, implying that the orthographic effect during auditory lexical access was localized to the decision component and involved the influence of cross-character predictability without the activation of orthographic representations. This claim was further confirmed

Proficiency modulates early orthographic and phonological processing in L2 spoken word recognition

The present study investigated orthographic and phonological processing in L2 French spoken word recognition by Finnish learners of French, using the masked cross-modal priming paradigm. Experiment 1 showed a repetition effect in L2 within-language priming that was most pronounced for high proficiency learners and a significant effect for French pseudohomophones. In the between-language Experiment 2, high proficiency learners showed significant facilitation from L1 Finnish to L2 French shared orthography in the absence of phonological and semantic overlap. This effect was not observed in the lower intermediate group, which showed a significant benefit of L1 pseudohomophones instead. The orthographic effect in the high proficiency group was modulated by subjective familiarity showing facilitation for less familiar but not for highly familiar words. The results suggest that with L2 learners, the extent to which orthographic information affects L2 spoken word recognition depends on their L2 proficiency.

Orthographic facilitation in Chinese spoken word recognition: An ERP study

Orthographic influences in spoken word recognition have been previously examined in alphabetic languages. However, it is unknown whether orthographic information affects spoken word recognition in Chinese, which has a clean dissociation between orthography (O) and phonology (P). The present study investigated orthographic effects using event related potentials (ERPs) and an auditory lexical decision task. We manipulated the relationship between the phonology and orthography of the first syllable in each prime-target pair using the following four conditions: P+O+, P+O−, P−O+, P−O−. Importantly, we found significantly reduced N400 amplitudes when an item was preceded by an orthographically similar prime. In addition, these reduced N400 amplitudes were positively correlated with participants’ reading skill. The findings indicate that orthographic information is activated automatically during Chinese spoken word recognition, supporting the theory that there is a reciprocal connection between speech and print.