Lexical Reading Research Articles

Fully transparent orthography, yet lexical reading aloud: The lexicality effect in Italian

This is the first study that reports the lexicality effect (i.e., words read better than nonwords) in Italian with fully transparent and methodologically well-controlled stimuli. We investigated how words and nonwords are read aloud in the Italian transparent orthography, in which there is an almost strict one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Contrary to the claim that in such orthography word naming is accomplished primarily by the nonlexical assembly route, we found that words were named faster than nonwords, regardless of their frequency (high or low) or the composition of the experimental list (pure vs. mixed blocks). These findings show that the lexical route is the main one used by readers even in a language with a transparent orthography.

Reliability and prevalence of an atypical development of phonological skills in French-speaking dyslexics

In the present study, conducted with French-speaking children, we examined the reliability (group study) and the prevalence (multiple-case study) of dyslexics’ phonological deficits in reading and reading-related skills in comparison with Reading Level (RL) controls. All dyslexics with no comorbidity problem schooled in a special institution for children with severe reading deficits were included in the study (N = 15; Chronological Age [CA]: 111 ± 8 months; RL: 80 ± 3 months). For the group study, the 15 dyslexics were matched pairwise on reading level, non-verbal IQ, and gender to 15 younger RL controls (CA: 85 ± 4 months). For the multiple-case study, the RL control group included 86 average readers (CA: 83 ± 4 months; RL: 85 ± 5 months). To assess the relative efficiency of the sublexical (or phonological) and lexical reading procedures, we relied on two comparisons: pseudowords vs. high-frequency regular words (the comparison mainly used in languages with a shallow orthography); and pseudowords vs. high-frequency irregular words (the comparison mainly used with English-speaking dyslexics), pseudowords and irregular words being either short or long. The dyslexics’ skills in the domains supposed to explain their reading deficit were also examined: phonemic awareness, phonological short-term memory and rapid naming. In the group study, the dyslexics lagged behind the RL controls only when they were required to read long pseudowords. The results of the multiple-case study indicated that the prevalence of this deficit was high (the accuracy scores of all but two of the 15 dyslexics being more than 1 SD below the RL control mean), and that deficits in phonemic awareness were more prevalent (seven cases) than deficits in phonological memory (one case) and in rapid naming (two cases). Three unexpected results were observed in the group study: the difference between regular words and pseudowords (to the detriment of pseudowords) was not greater for the dyslexics; the difference between irregular words and pseudowords (to the benefit of pseudowords) was more significant for the RL controls; and there were no significant differences between the groups in reading-related skills. To explain these results, the severity of the dyslexics’ reading deficit and the remediation they have benefited from must be taken into account. In addition, the fact that the outcomes of the comparison between pseudoword vs. regular or irregular word reading were not the same will make it possible to understand some discrepancies between studies carried out either in English or in a language with a shallower orthography (French, for instance).

Do Italian dyslexic children use the lexical reading route efficiently? An orthographic judgment task

The study uses an orthographic judgment task to evaluate the efficiency of the lexical reading route in Italian dyslexic children. It has been suggested that Italian dyslexic children rely prevalently on the sub-word-level routine for reading. However, it is not easy to test the lexical reading route in Italian directly because of the lack of critical items (irregular words), so visual lexical decision tasks and the comprehension/detection of pseudo-homophones are often used. While the former may also be solved on the basis of visual familiarity or phonological re-codification, the latter also involves conceptual and syntactic skills. Eleven dyslexic children participated in the study, performing an orthographic judgment task on stimuli with two phonologically plausible spellings, of which only one was orthographically correct. Their performance was compared with those of 11 proficient readers. The dyslexic children showed selective impairment in detecting phonologically plausible errors, but their performance was normal when required to judge errors inserted in words with regular orthography, i.e., devoid of orthographic ambiguity, and for which a sub-word-level reading procedure is sufficient to guarantee a good performance. Overall, data are coherent with a diagnosis of surface dyslexia, with most children showing defective orthographic lexical processing.

Morpheme-based reading aloud: Evidence from dyslexic and skilled Italian readers

The role of morphology in reading aloud was examined measuring naming latencies to pseudowords and words composed of morphemes (roots and derivational suffixes) and corresponding simple pseudowords and words. Three groups of Italian children of different ages and reading abilities, including dyslexic children, as well as one group of adult readers participated in the study. All four groups read faster and more accurately pseudowords composed of root and suffix than simple pseudowords (Experiment 1). Unlike skilled young and adult readers, both dyslexics and younger children benefited from morphological structure also in reading aloud words (Experiment 2). It is proposed that the morpheme is a unit of intermediate grain size that proves useful in processing all linguistic stimuli, including words, in individuals with limited reading ability (dyslexics and younger readers) who did not fully develop mastering of whole-word processing. For skilled readers, morphemic parsing is useful for reading those stimuli (i.e., pseudowords made up of morphemes), for which a whole-word lexical unit does not exist; where such whole-word lexical units do exist, skilled readers do not need to rely on morphological parsing because they can rely on a lexical (whole-word) reading unit that is larger than the morpheme.

Comparison of phonological and whole-word treatments for two contrasting cases of developmental dyslexia

This study compared the effectiveness of two reading treatment programmes for two contrasting developmental dyslexics. W.B. demonstrated “pure” phonological dyslexia (deficient nonword reading but normal irregular-word reading) and N.S. “pure” surface dyslexia (the converse pattern). Both participants completed: (a) a phonological programme, which targeted the sublexical reading procedure through repeated exposure to word “families” with the same grapheme–phoneme correspondence (GPC; e.g., frail, raid, bait); and (b) a whole-word programme, which targeted the lexical reading procedure through tasks that emphasize whole-word visual analysis (e.g., speeded identification of visually degraded words). Both participants improved after training on the targeted words and/or GPCs. However, W.B. demonstrated reliable generalization only following the phonological programme and only in his reading of nonwords. In contrast, N.S. showed generalization across all types of word materials following both programmes. Although the whole-word programme (in particular the degraded-images technique) resulted in numerically greater improvement for N.S., this difference was not significant. Practical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Frequency, not age of acquisition, affects Italian word naming

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the claim that age of acquisition (AoA) and word frequency effects are reduced or nonexistent in languages that have very regular letter-to-sound mappings, like Italian. The first two experiments (Exp. 1, Exp. 2) showed that frequency variables affect reading aloud and lexical decision in Italian. Variables interpretable as pertaining to a semantic component, including AoA, affected lexical decision but not reading aloud. In Experiments 3 and 4, a measure of frequency—child written word frequency (ChFreq)—and AoA were manipulated. Reading performance was affected by word frequency but not by AoA (Exp. 3), whereas lexical decision was affected by both variables (Exp. 4). In Experiments 5 and 6, ChFreq and AoA were manipulated orthogonally. Only frequency affected reading aloud, with no main effect or interaction involving AoA (Exp. 5). The effects of AoA and frequency interacted in Experiment 6 for lexical decision due to a larger effect of AoA for low frequency words than high frequency words. These results show that in languages with a transparent orthography word frequency may affect reading aloud in the absence of an effect of AoA because Italian readers employ lexical nonsemantic reading aloud. The effect of child written frequency points to the efficiency of the mappings between those orthographic and phonological word forms that were frequently encountered when learning to read.

Neural Representations of Visual Words and Objects: A Functional MRI Study on the Modularity of Reading and Object Processing

There have been several studies supporting the notion of a ventral-dorsal distinction in the primate cortex for visual object processing, whereby the ventral stream specializes in object identification, and the dorsal stream is engaged during object localization and interaction. There is also a growing body of evidence supporting a ventral stream that specializes in lexical (i.e., whole-word) reading, and a dorsal stream that is engaged during sub-lexical reading (i.e., phonetic decoding). Here, we consider the extent to which word-reading processes are located in regions either intersecting with, or unique from, regions that sub-serve object processing along these streams. Object identification was contrasted with lexical-based reading, and object interaction processing (i.e., deciding how to interact with an object) was contrasted with sub-lexical reading. Our results suggest that object identification and lexical-based reading are largely ventral and modular, showing mainly unique regions of activation (parahippocampal and occipital-temporal gyri function associated with object identification, and lingual, lateral occipital, and posterior inferior temporal gyri function associated with lexical-based reading) and very little shared activation (posterior inferior frontal gyrus). Object interaction processing and phonetic decoding are largely dorsal, and show both modular regions of activation (more lateralized to the dorsal-frontal right hemisphere for pseudohomophone naming, and more to the dorsal-frontal left hemisphere for the object interaction task) as well as significant shared regions of processing (precentral gyri, left inferior frontal cortex, left postcentral gyrus, left lateral occipital cortex, and superior posterior temporal gyri). Given that the perceptual experimental conditions show primarily modular and very little shared processing, whereas the analytical conditions show both substantial modular and shared processing, we discuss a reconsideration of "modularity of mind" which involves a continuum between strictly modular processing and varying degrees of shared processing, and which also depends on the nature of the tasks compared (i.e., perceptual versus analytical).

Orthographic cueing in anomic aphasia: How does it work?

Background: Both orthographic and phonological information from the target word can be appropriate cues in anomia treatment. Furthermore, both types of cues are used very frequently in clinical practice, although their underlying mechanisms of effectiveness and stability are still a matter of debate (e.g., Basso, Marangolo, Piras, & Galluzzi, 2001; Best, Herbert, Hickin, Osborne, & Howard, 2002; Howard & Harding, 1998). We would like to thank JUE, KCC, and MCB for their participation in this study. Furthermore, many thanks are due to Belinda McDonald, Kate Makin, and Melanie Moses for their support in recruitment of participants.This research was supported by an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship to Lyndsey Nickels and an Endeavour Australia Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and a MACCS visiting scholar grant to Antje Lorenz. Aims: The aim of the study was to examine the mechanisms by which orthographic cues are effective in detail. The study addresses two questions. First, what is the relationship between sublexical transcoding ability and the effectiveness of orthographic cues? And second, what is the relationship between effectiveness of orthographic cues and effectiveness of phonological cues? Methods & Procedures: Three people with chronic aphasia and moderate to severe anomia participated in facilitation of spoken naming, using either the initial phoneme or initial letter of the target word. Both immediate and delayed effects were assessed over six facilitation sessions. Orthographic and phonological cue effects were investigated with regard to regularity of orthographic‐phonological conversion (OPC) of the target's initial letter, and with regard to sub‐lexical and lexical reading and repetition in the participants using a multiple single‐case design (cf. Howard, 2003). Outcomes & Results: In one participant both phonological and orthographic cues produced similar effects. In the other two participants, orthographic cueing effects were present in the absence of phonological cueing effects. With regard to regularity of the initial letter‐phoneme conversion in the orthographic condition, a similar pattern overall was present for regular, ambiguous, and irregular target words, e.g., initial letter cues seemed to be similarly effective in words such as KNIFE (irregular OPC of initial letter) as in words such as KING or DOLL. Conclusions: Initial letter cues are appropriate cues for the effective treatment of anomia as they may produce strong and long‐lasting effects. In contrast to earlier predictions (e.g., Bruce & Howard, 1988), initial letter cues may be effective even in participants where the initial phoneme cue remains totally ineffective. There are likely to be various mechanisms of effectiveness underpinning orthographic cue effects: a sub‐lexical mechanism and a lexical mechanism of effectiveness.

Reading & writing

07–259Abasi, Ali R., Nahal Akbari & Barbara Graves (U Ottawa, Canada), Discourse appropriation, construction of identities, and the complex issue of plagiarism: ESL students writing in graduate school. Journal of Second Language Writing (Elsevier) 15.2 (2006), 102–117.07–260Brantmeier, Cindy (Washington U, St Louis, USA), Toward a multicomponent model of interest and L2 reading: Sources of interest, perceived situational interest, and comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, USA) 18.2 (2006), 89–115.07–261Bremner, Stephen (City U Hong Kong, China), Politeness, power, and activity systems: Written requests and multiple audiences in an institutional setting. Written Communication (Sage) 23.4 (2006), 397–423.07–262Cargill, Margaret (U Adelaide, Australia) & Patrick O'Connor, Developing Chinese scientists' skills for publishing in English: Evaluating collaborating-colleague workshops based on genre analysis. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Elsevier) 5.3 (2006), 207–221.07–263Edge, Julian, Reading to take notes and to summarize: A classroom procedure (reprint of author's 1983 article). Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, USA), 1.2, 93–98.07–264Edge, Julian (Manchester U, UK; julian.edge@manchester.ac.uk), From paragraphs to patterns: Ablocutionary value in autobiography. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, USA) 18.2 (2006), 124–127.07–265Goetry, Vincent, Lesly Wade-Woolley, Régine Kolinsky & Philıppe Mousty (Queen's U, Belgium; vgoetry@ulb.ac.be), The role of stress processing abilities in the development of bilingual reading. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 29.3 (2006), 349–362.07–266Huang, Shu-Chen (National Chiao Tung U, Hsinchu, China; sjh241@yahoo.com.tw), Reading English for academic purposes – What situational factors may motivate learners to read?System (Elsevier) 34.3 (2006), 371–383.07–267Huang, Shu-Chen, Yuh-Show Cheng & Chiou-Lan Chern (National Chiao Tung U, Hsinchu, Taiwan; sjh241@yahoo.com.tw), Pre-reading materials from subject matter texts – Learner choices and the underlying learner characteristics. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Elsevier) 5.3 (2006), 193–206.07–268Hui-Tzu Min (National Cheng Kung U, Tainan, Taiwan), The effects of trained peer review on EFL students' revision types and writing quality. Journal of Second Language Writing (Elsevier) 15.2 (2006), 118–141.07–269Ikeda, Makiko (Himeji Dokkyo U, Japan; maikoike@wonder.ocn.ne.jp) & Takeuchi, Osamu, Clarifying the differences in learning EFL reading strategies: An analysis of portfolios. System (Elsevier) 34.3 (2006), 384–398.07–270Juzwik, Mary M. (Michigan State U, East Lansing, USA, mmjuzwik@msu.edu), Svjetlana Curcic, Kimberly Wolbers, Kathleen D. Moxley, Lisa M. Dimling & Rebecca K. Shankland, Writing into the 21st century: An overview of research on writing, 1999 to 2004. Written Communication (Sage) 23.4 (2006), 452–476.07–271Ma, Jee Hyun (U Hawaii, USA; jeehyun@hawaii.edu), Just taking notes is not enough. Reading in a Foreign Language (U Hawaii, USA) 18.2 (2006), 128–130.07–272Orsolini, Margherita (Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’; margherita.orsolini@uniroma1.it), Rachele Fanari, Valeria Tosi, Barbara De Nigris & Roberto Carrieri, From phonological recoding to lexical reading: A longitudinal study on reading development in Italian. Language and Cognitive Processes (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) 21.5 (2006), 576–607.07–273Pretorious, Elizabeth (U South Africa, South Africa; pretoej@unisa.ac.za), The comprehension of logical relations in expository texts by students who study through the medium of ESL. System (Elsevier) 34.3 (2006), 432–450.07–274Rogers, Rebecca & Melissa Mosley, Racial literacy in a second-grade classroom: Critical race theory, whiteness studies, and literacy research. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 41.4 (2006), 462–495.07–275Ross, Nigel (Institute for Interpreters and Translators, Milan, Italy), Writing in the Information Age. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 47–50.07–276Schwanenflugel, Paula J., Elizabeth B. Meisinger, Joseph M. Wisenbaker, M. R. Kuhn, Gregory P. Strauss & Robin D. Morris, Becoming a fluent and automatic reader in the early elementary school years. Reading Research Quarterly (International Reading Association) 41.4 (2006), 496–522.07–277Starfield, Sue & Louise J. Ravelli (U New South Wales, Sydney, Australia), ‘The writing of this thesis was a process that I could not explore with the positivistic detachment of the classical sociologist’: Self and structure inNew Humanitiesresearch theses. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Elsevier) 5.3 (2006), 222–243.07–278Tardy, Christine M. (DePaul U, Chicago, USA), Researching first and second language genre learning: A comparative review and a look ahead. Journal of Second Language Writing (Elsevier) 15.2 (2006), 79–101.07–279Weber, Rose-Marıe (State U New York, USA; rweber@albany.edu), Function words in the prosody of fluent reading. Journal of Research in Reading (Blackwell) 29.3 (2006), 258–269.07–280Wood, Clare (Coventry U, UK; c.wood@coventry.ac.uk), Metrical stress sensitivity in young children and its relationship to phonological awareness and reading. 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Diagnosis and rehabilitation attempt of a patient with acquired dyslexia.

Although dyslexia is a common consequence of brain damage there are few studies about therehabilitation of this disorder. Cognitive Neuropsychology models of reading have been used to describe severalsyndromes of acquired dyslexia. Phonological dyslexia is a reading disorder characterized by a dysfunctionalgrapheme-to-phoneme conversion procedure, which affects the ability to read low frequency words and nonwords. Lexical reading is preserved and patients can read frequent words (regular and irregular).ObjectiveVerify the application of the cognitive model in the characterization of the reading disorder of a patient with acquired dyslexia and in the devising and implementation of a rehabilitation plan.MethodsThis study presents OCS, a 57-year-old patient who suffered from acquired phonological dyslexia after a left temporo-parietooccipital ischemic stroke. A rehabilitation program based on the principles of Cognitive Neuropsychology was devised non-words and low frequency words with controlled lengths were used and the patient was stimulated to read them aloud in a 22-session treatment.ResultsThe post-test evaluation showed quantitative and qualitative improvements Significant improvements were verified in the total number of correct responses including self-correction attempts (p<0.01) and in the reading of trisyllabic and polysyllabic non-words of simple syllabic structure (p=0.0007 and p=0.02 respectively).ConclusionsThe use of the cognitive model to devise a rehabilitation program was successful and we observed significant improvement of reading skills in a short period of treatment. The achievements over this period provided the patient with functional reading performance.

Reading strategies of bilingual normally progressing and dyslexic readers in Hindi and English

This study examined the reading accuracy of dyslexic readers in comparison to chronological age-matched normally progressing readers in Hindi and English using word reading tasks, matched for spoken frequency of usage, age of acquisition, imageability, and word length. Both groups showed significantly greater reading accuracy in Hindi than in English. For normally progressing readers, spoken frequency of usage had no significant effect in Hindi and a significant effect in English, whereas for dyslexic readers it had a significant effect in both languages. In Hindi, normally progressing readers produced only nonword errors; dyslexic readers produced a far greater percentage of nonword than word errors. In English, normally progressing readers produced greater percentage of word than nonword errors, whereas dyslexic readers produced greater percentage of nonword than word errors. Results are discussed in terms of orthographic transparency, sublexical, and lexical reading strategies.

Separate orthographic representations for reading and spelling? Evidence from a case of preserved lexical reading and impaired lexical spelling

Separate orthographic representations for reading and spelling? Evidence from a case of preserved lexical reading and impaired lexical spelling

From phonological recoding to lexical reading: A longitudinal study on reading development in Italian

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgment This research was supported by a grant from the Italian Ministry for Universities, Education, and Research (MIUR) to M. Orsolini (Cofin 2002). We thank Pierluigi Zoccolotti and Cristina Burani for their helpful comments. The authors are grateful to the teachers, staff, and the children of the primary school in Rome who participated in the research project. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMargherita OrsoliniCorrespondence should be addressed to Margherita Orsolini, Dipartimento di Psicologia dei Processi di Sviluppo e Socializzazione, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Roma, Italy. margherita.orsolini@uniroma1.it

Italian developmental dyslexic and proficient readers: Where are the differences?

Italian dyslexic children are characterized by a pervasive reading speed deficit, with relatively preserved accuracy. This pattern has been associated with predominant use of the nonlexical reading procedure. However, there is no evidence of a deficit in the lexical route of Italian dyslexics. We investigated both lexical and nonlexical reading procedures in dyslexic children through two marker effects, namely, the word frequency effect and the effect of contextual grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules. Although dyslexics were slower and less accurate than controls, they were affected by word frequency, grapheme contextuality, and their interaction in a similar manner as average readers. These results show the use of lexical reading in Italian dyslexics, and refute the claim of a deficit in whole-word processing with consequent over-reliance on the nonlexical route.

The effect of word length on lexical decision in dyslexic and normal reading children

In the present study, the effect of word length on lexical decision in dyslexic and normal reading children was investigated. Dyslexics of 10-years old, chronological age controls, and reading age controls read words and pseudowords consisting of 3 to 6 letters in a lexical decision task. Length effects were much stronger in dyslexics and reading age controls than in chronological age controls. These results support the contention that dyslexics continue to rely on a predominantly sub-lexical reading procedure, whereas for normal readers the contribution of a lexical reading procedure increases. The relevance of the findings for current computational models of reading is discussed.

A Paradigmatic View of Spanish amenazar ‘to threaten’ and prometer ‘to promise’

Besides their common lexical reading, the Spanish verbs amenazar ‘threaten’ and prometer ‘promise’ can also yield a modal reading. The shift from the former reading to the latter implies a change from a control structure to a raising structure and involves grammaticalization, more specifically auxiliation, which ends up in a layered co-existence of the two (or more) constructions. This paper is mainly concerned with the syntactic and semantic categorization of the grammaticalized quasi-modals amenazar and prometer. Generative accounts have focused on the difference between raising and control, but have not addressed the differences between the two verbs. This paper highlights that modal amenazar faces less constraints than modal prometer . Furthermore, the account presented below will show that epistemic and evidential auxiliaries have scope over the qualification expressed by modal amenazar and prometer, and are therefore not to be called “epistemic”. The paper also deals with the tense restrictions that these verbs undergo. Tenses such as the present perfect are not available in modal constructions with amenazar and prometer because of the activation of agentive patterns inherent to the lexical semantics of the verbs in question. The tense criterion is valid for verbs for which the grammaticalized form is not the most frequent one, but it does not account for true modals in Spanish and other Romance languages. The infinitive criterion turns out to be a good alternative.

Acquired Dyslexia in Spanish: A Review and Some Observations on a New Case of Deep Dyslexia

Readers and writers of Spanish use an orthography that is highly transparent. It has been proposed that readers of Spanish can rely on grapheme-phoneme correspondences, alone, to access meaning or phonology from print. In recent years, a number of case studies have yielded evidence inconsistent with this idea. We review these studies with particular focus on those that report evidence for reading based on direct lexical mappings between print, orthographic representations, and meaning or phonology. We report a new case of acquired literacy impairment in Spanish, MJ, who presents a pattern of preserved abilities and deficits symptomatic of deep dyslexia. The patient is unable to read nonwords, but can read a substantial number of words. Her reading is characterized by the production of semantic, visual, and derivational errors. We argue that MJ has a deficit in her lexical selection ability, common to both her reading and her naming problems. We propose that MJ, and the other cases we review, demonstrate that lexical reading is adopted by skilled readers even in a transparent language.

Acquired Surface Alexia in Spanish: A Case Report

This paper reports a case study of acquired surface alexia in Spanish and discusses the most suitable tests to detect this syndrome in a writing system that is very regular for reading at the segmental and supra-segmental levels. Patient MM has surface alexia characterized by quantitatively good performance in reading words and pseudowords; accurate but slow and syllabic reading of words, nonwords and sentences; good performance in lexical decision tasks including words and nonwords; errors in lexical decision with pseudohomophones; and homophone confusions. This pattern of reading can be interpreted as a disorder in the lexical reading route and overdependence on the non-lexical route. We discuss nonlexical impairments and the interpretation of alexia and suggest tasks to identify surface alexia in a shallow orthography.

The shift from lexical to subjective readings of Spanish prometer ‘to promise’ and amenazar ‘to threaten’. a corpus-based account

The Spanish verbs amenazar ‘to threaten’ andprometer ‘to promise’ do not only have a lexical reading but can also yield a subjective one, whereby the likelihood of the event expressed in the infinitive receives a negative, resp. a positive, evaluation. Three hypotheses are being tested: 1) as an outcome of the illocutionary force and the subject commitment attached to lexical prometer, the subjective readings of the latter may be expected to score high on the probability scale, whereas the event introduced by subjective amenazar will score low, in line with the lack of illocutionary force and weak subject commitment in lexical reading of this verb. 2) The viewpoint substantiated by the two verbs also differs: Whereas amenazar renders an event-oriented evidential reading from an internal point of view, prometer projects an external viewpoint leading to a more speaker-oriented subjective reading. 3) As a result of (1) and (2), prometer should easily combine with negatively oriented complements, whereas amenazar should resist taking positively oriented ones. The corpus research fully corroborates the first two hypotheses. The data, however, fail to unequivocally sustain the third one, especially because amenazar displays more flexibility than expected.

Paap and Noel revisited: individual differences in independent word recognition tasks in relation to the dual-task paradigm.

Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants' pronunciation latencies were faster for low-frequency irregular words when named under a concurrent high digit memory load than when named under a low load. The effects reported by Paap and Noel haveproved difficult to replicate in subsequent studies. The present research suggests that individual differences in word recognition skill relate to who will or will not show these effects. In two experiments, participants were allocated to skill groups on the basis of latency in tasks tapping lexical and sub-lexical reading processes. In both studies, only one group (the "intermediate skilled"), showed evidence of such effects. A combined analysis of the data from Experiments 1 and 2 was carried out. This confirmed and extended the analyses of the individual experiments. The results are discussed in relation to contemporary models of word recognition.