English Word Identification Research Articles

Probing potential priming: Defining, quantifying, and testing the causal priming effect using the potential outcomes framework.

Having previously seen an item helps uncover the item another time, given a perceptual or cognitive cue. Oftentimes, however, it may be difficult to quantify or test the existence and size of a perceptual or cognitive effect, in general, and a priming effect, in particular. This is because to examine the existence of and quantify the effect, one needs to compare two outcomes: the outcome had one previously seen the item vs. the outcome had one not seen the item. But only one of the two outcomes is observable. Here, we argue that the potential outcomes framework is useful to define, quantify, and test the causal priming effect. To demonstrate its efficacy, we apply the framework to study the priming effect using data from a between-subjects study involving English word identification. In addition, we show that what has been used intuitively by experimentalists to assess the priming effect in the past has a sound mathematical foundation. Finally, we examine the links between the proposed method in studying priming and the multinomial processing tree (MPT) model, and how to extend the method to study experimental paradigms involving exclusion and inclusion instructional conditions.

The role of f0 shape and phrasal position in Papuan Malay and American English word identification.

The prosodic structure of under-researched languages in the Trade Malay language family is poorly understood. Although boundary marking has been uncontroversially shown as the major prosodic function in these languages, studies on the use of pitch accents to highlight important words in a phrase remain inconclusive. In addition, most knowledge of pitch accents is based on well-researched languages such as the ones from the Western-Germanic language family. This paper reports two word identification experiments comparing Papuan Malay with the pitch accent language American English, in order to investigate theextent to which the demarcating and highlighting function of prosody can be disentangled. To this end, target words were presented to native listeners of both languages and differed with respect to their position in the phrase (medial or final) and the shape of their f0 movement (original or manipulated). Reaction times for the target word identifications revealed overall faster responses for original and final words compared to manipulated and medial ones. The results add to previous findings on the facilitating effect of pitch accents and further improve our prosodic knowledge of underresearched languages.

Cross-Linguistic Word Recognition Development Among Chinese Children: A Multilevel Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling Approach.

The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and item-level effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade level); (b) subject-level, endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system.

English Native and Nonnative Speakers’ Perception of English Reduced Word Forms with Reduced Vowels

It has been controversial whether phonetic-fine details of the lexical items are encoded and accessed in L1 or L2 speakers’ lexicon and how the variants of the reduced word forms are recognized. To address these issues, in this study we carried out the perceptual word recognition experiment, i.e., AB identification test with English native speakers and Korean nonnative English speakers. Two types of synthesized listening stimuli were created from two types of the original word forms by shortening or lengthening the durations of the reduced vowels: words containing the reduced vowels and words without them in the first syllables. First, the results show that a wider variety of tokens of the variants of reduced word forms differing only in the durations of the reduced vowels were recognized with substantially high rates as those with the reduced vowels for English L1 speakers than for Korean L2 English speakers. These findings indicate that phonetic-fine detail information of the reduced word forms with respect to the vowel durations is represented and reconstructed in the lexicon for L1 and L2 speakers’ lexicon although their representational robustness varies depending on L1 or L2 status. Furthermore, we show that the degrees of vowel reduction exert the differential effects on the reconstruction or identification of English words according to the word-initial C(V)C types and L1 or L2 status. It also turns out that depending on the presence/absence of the reduced vowels in the words, Korean L2 English speakers are less sensitive or oversensitive to the vowel duration when they recognize the words.

ASL and English bilingual Shared Book Reading: An exploratory intervention for signing deaf children

ABSTRACTAn exploratory study was implemented with bilingual deaf children using a quasi-experimental pre- and posttest design with a 10-week American Sign Language (ASL) and English bilingual Shared Book Reading intervention. Standardized and research-made instruments were used to evaluate ASL and English skills. Intervention effects showed improvements in Receptive ASL skills, Book Reading, and the ability to draw and describe drawings in both languages. Growth in visual phonology was evident in the drawings, and no relationship between auditory phonology and English word identification was found. The results provide implications for early literacy instruction with suggestions for future research.

Does Growth in the Executive System of Working Memory Underlie Growth in Literacy for Bilingual Children With and Without Reading Disabilities?

This cohort-sequential study explored the components of working memory (WM) that underlie second language (L2) reading growth in 450 children at risk and not at risk for reading disabilities (RD) whose first language is Spanish. English language learners designated as balanced and nonbalanced bilinguals with and without risk for RD in Grades 1, 2, and 3 at Wave 1 were administered a battery of cognitive (short-term memory, WM, naming speed, and inhibition), vocabulary, and reading measures in Spanish and English. These same measures were administered 1 and 2 years later. Two important findings occurred: First, growth in the WM executive component was significantly related to growth in English word identification and passage comprehension when competing measures (phonological processing, naming speed, inhibition, and fluid intelligence) were entered into the multilevel growth model. Second, children defined as at risk for RD in Wave 1 had lower intercepts than children not at risk at Wave 3 across several measures of cognition, language, and achievement. However, except on measures of the executive component of WM, no significant group differences in linear growth emerged. These findings suggest that growth in L2 reading was tied to growth in the executive system of WM.

The word frequency effect in first- and second-language word recognition: A lexical entrenchment account

We investigate the origin of differences in the word frequency effect between native speakers and second-language speakers. In a large-scale analysis of English word identification times we find that group-level differences are fully accounted for by the individual language proficiency scores. Furthermore, exactly the same quantitative relation between word frequency and proficiency is found for monolinguals and three different bilingual populations (Dutch-English, French-English, and German-English). We conclude that the larger frequency effects for second-language processing than for native-language processing can be explained by within-language characteristics and thus need not be the consequence of "being bilingual" (i.e., a qualitative difference). More specifically, we argue that language proficiency increases lexical entrenchment, which leads to a reduced frequency effect, irrespective of bilingualism, language dominance, and language similarity.

Early English Immersion and Literacy in Xi'an, China

Instruction in English as a foreign language at an early age is becoming more common worldwide even though the effects of this early instruction are not yet known. This study investigated the English and Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a Chinese primary school. In addition, factors that could predict successful English word recognition were investigated. There were 183 participants who were tested in both Chinese and English word identification, phonological awareness, and vocabulary, as well as English oral proficiency and letter name knowledge. The immersion students performed significantly better than the non‐immersion group on measures of English vocabulary, word identification, and oral proficiency, without any detrimental effects on their Chinese character reading, which made the program, in effect, an additive bilingual system. In addition, phonological awareness and letter name knowledge proved to be strong predictors of English word identification for the immersion students, a finding that was similar to results obtained in studies of native English‐speaking children. The findings have potentially useful pedagogical applications.

Is there a neighborhood frequency effect in English? Evidence from reading and lexical decision.

What is the effect of a word's higher frequency neighbors on its identification time? According to activation-based models of word identification (J. Grainger & A. M. Jacobs, 1996; J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981), words with higher frequency neighbors will be processed more slowly than words without higher frequency neighbors because of the lexical competition mechanism embodied in these models. Although a critical prediction of these models, this inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect has been elusive in studies that have used English stimuli. In the present experiments, the effect of higher frequency neighbors was examined in the lexical decision task and when participants were reading sentences while their eye movements were monitored. Results suggest that higher frequency neighbors have little, if any, effect on the identification of English words. The implications for activation-based models of word identification are discussed.

An L1-script-transfer-effect fallacy: a rejoinder to Wang et al. (2003)

Do different L1 (first language) writing systems differentially affect word identification in English as a second language (ESL)? Wang, Koda, and Perfetti [Cognition 87 (2003) 129] answered yes by examining Chinese students with a logographic L1 background and Korean students with an alphabetic L1 background for their phonological and orthographic processing skills on English word identification. Such a conclusion is premature, however. We propose that the L1 phonological system (rather than the L1 writing system) of the learner largely accounts for cognitive processes in learning to read a second language (L2).

An L1-script-transfer-effect fallacy: a rejoinder to Wang et al. (2003)

Do different L1 (first language) writing systems differentially affect word identification in English as a second language (ESL)? Wang, Koda, and Perfetti [Cognition 87 (2003) 129] answered yes by examining Chinese students with a logographic L1 background and Korean students with an alphabetic L1 background for their phonological and orthographic processing skills on English word identification. Such a conclusion is premature, however. We propose that the L1 phonological system (rather than the L1 writing system) of the learner largely accounts for cognitive processes in learning to read a second language (L2).

Literacy and Cognitive Functioning in Bilingual and Nonbilingual Children at or Not at Risk for Reading Disabilities.

The authors determined whether the cognitive processes that underlie second-language acquisition difficulties are the same as those that underlie reading difficulties. First-grade (N = 101) bilingual and nonbilingual children were administered a battery of measures in Spanish and English. English word identification and vocabulary were predicted by a language-general working-memory (WM) factor, whereas English pseudoword reading was predicted by Spanish pseudoword reading and WM. The results also showed that (a) children proficient in language were better able to access resources from WM and (b) children with reading disabilities (RD) performed poorly on Spanish measures of short-term memory. In general, second-language difficulties are related to accessing a language-independent WM system, whereas language-specific phonological memory deficits underlie RD.

Alphabetic and nonalphabetic L1 effects in English word identification: a comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2 learners

Different writing systems in the world select different units of spoken language for mapping. Do these writing system differences influence how first language (L1) literacy experiences affect cognitive processes in learning to read a second language (L2)? Two groups of college students who were learning to read English as a second language (ESL) were examined for their relative reliance on phonological and orthographic processing in English word identification: Korean students with an alphabetic L1 literacy background, and Chinese students with a nonalphabetic L1 literacy background. In a semantic category judgment task, Korean ESL learners made more false positive errors in judging stimuli that were homophones to category exemplars than they did in judging spelling controls. However, there were no significant differences in responses to stimuli in these two conditions for Chinese ESL learners. Chinese ESL learners, on the other hand, made more accurate responses to stimuli that were less similar in spelling to category exemplars than those that were more similar. Chinese ESL learners may rely less on phonological information and more on orthographic information in identifying English words than their Korean counterparts. Further evidence supporting this argument came from a phoneme deletion task in which Chinese subjects performed more poorly overall than their Korean counterparts and made more errors that were phonologically incorrect but orthographically acceptable. We suggest that cross-writing system differences in L1s and L1 reading skills transfer could be responsible for these ESL performance differences.

Phonological and associative inhibition in the early stages of English word identification: Evidence from backward masking.

Phonological and associative inhibition in the early stages of English word identification: Evidence from backward masking.

Phonological and associative inhibition in the early stages of English word identification: Evidence from backward masking.

Phonological and associative inhibition in the early stages of English word identification: Evidence from backward masking.

Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness.

A study investigated the factors influencing the English word identification performance of Spanish-speaking beginning readers. Beginning readers were administered tests of letter naming, Spanish phonological awareness, Spanish and English word recognition, and Spanish and English oral proficiency. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that the readers' performance on EngIish word and pseudoword recognition tests was predicted by the levels of both Spanish phonological awareness and Spanish word recognition, thus indicating cross-language transfer. In contrast, neither English nor Spanish oral proficiency affected word-identification performance. Results suggest a specific way in which first-language learning and experience can aid children in the beginning stages of reading

Listening Perception Accuracy of ESL Learners as a Variable Function of Speaker L1

U As we incorporate into our ESL speaking classes a greater number of interactive tasks involving nonnative-speaker/nonnative-speaker (NNS/ NNS) dyads or groups, trying to create the optimum conditions for learners to benefit from negotiated input (Long, 1983; Doughty & Pica, 1986), we have tended to move away from exercises that focus on linguistic form, particularly in terms of the pronunciation and perception of English sound contrasts at the syllable or word level. This would seem to be justified if we could be sure that, as an inevitable part of receiving negotiated input, learners were in fact developing sufficient accuracy in the production and perception of those features of spoken English that play a crucial part in comprehension. According to Long and Porter (1985), accuracy does not suffer when learners take part in interactive pair work with other NNSs. However, this claim was primarily based on the use of grammatical structures and seems, in our experience, to be less tenable when we think of some learners whose accuracy in spoken production does seem to be subject to some variation. We do not know of any studies focusing specifically on level of pronunciation and perception accuracy in NNS/NNS pair work, but we have observed that learners seem to get by with fairly inaccurate pronunciations (in terms of the target) when their NNS partner is very familiar with their speech, particularly in the EFL context where interlocutors share the same L1 (Kenworthy, 1987). We wondered if ESL learners actually found it easier to identify English words when these were spoken by other learners than when they were spoken by English native speakers. In an attempt to answer this question, we designed a listening perception exercise to investigate whether learners became more or less accurate in their identification of English words as a function of the Li of the speaker.