Orthographic Influence Research Articles

Corrigendum to “Orthographic influence in the distributional learning of nonnative speech sounds”

Corrigendum to “Orthographic influence in the distributional learning of nonnative speech sounds”

Orthographic influence in the distributional learning of non-native speech sounds

This study investigated the role of orthographic information in the acquisition of non-native speech sounds by monolingual English listeners. Two potentially important orthographic variables were explored: Orthographic compatibility (whether the orthographic information supports or contradicts the distributional information) and orthographic familiarity (whether the native and target languages share the same orthography). Ten groups of learners were trained on either a unimodal or bimodal distribution of two length continua. Out of the 10 groups, eight groups were also exposed to orthographic cues that varied in their compatibility with the distributional information (compatible vs. incompatible) and familiarity with the orthography of learners’ native language (Roman vs. Arabic). Following training, all participants performed an AX discrimination task to test their discrimination of the length contrast. The results revealed that, in general, the availability of either familiar or unfamiliar orthographic input which signaled the existence of a single length category significantly lowered learners’ discrimination of the length contrast regardless of the auditory distribution. Further, the exposure to orthographic input that supported a two-category length distinction enhanced the discrimination of the length contrast irrespective of the distribution. However, the most significant improvement occurred when both distributional information and familiar orthographic input were compatible. Overall, these findings indicate that orthographic input, regardless of its level of compatibility or familiarity, may influence the acquisition of non-native speech sounds.

Phonological encoding is free from orthographic influence: evidence from a picture variant of the phonological Stroop task

The phonological Stroop task, in which the participant names the color of written distractors, is being used increasingly to study the phonological encoding process in speech production. A brief review of experimental paradigms used to study the phonological encoding process indicated that currently it is not known whether the onset overlap benefit (faster color naming when the distractor shares the onset segment with the color name) in a phonological Stroop task is due to phonology or orthography. The present paper investigated this question using a picture variant of the phonological Stroop task. Participants named a small set of line drawings of animals (e.g., camel) with a pseudoword distractor printed on it. Picture naming was facilitated when the distractor shared the onset segment with the picture name regardless of orthographic overlap (CUST-camel = KUST-camel < NUST-camel). We conclude that the picture variant of the phonological Stroop task is a useful tool to study the phonological encoding process, free of orthographic influence.

Spoken-word production in Korean: A non-word masked priming and phonological Stroop task investigation.

Speech production studies have shown that phonological unit initially used to fill the metrical frame during phonological encoding is language specific, that is, a phoneme for English and Dutch, an atonal syllable for Mandarin Chinese, and a mora for Japanese. However, only a few studies chronometrically investigated speech production in Korean, and they obtained mixed results. Korean is particularly interesting as there might be both phonemic and syllabic influences during phonological encoding. The purpose of this study is to further examine the initial phonological preparation unit in Korean, employing a masked priming task (Experiment 1) and a phonological Stroop task (Experiment 2). The results showed that significant onset (and onset-plus, that is, consonant-vowel [CV]) effects were found in both experiments, but there was no compelling evidence for a prominent role for the syllable. When the prime words were presented in three different forms related to the targets, namely, without any change, with re-syllabified codas, and with nasalised codas, there were no significant differences in facilitation among the three forms. Alternatively, it is also possible that participants may not have had sufficient time to process the primes up to the point that re-syllabification or nasalisation could have been carried out. In addition, the results of a Stroop task demonstrated that the onset phoneme effect was not driven by any orthographic influence. These findings suggest that the onset segment and not the syllable is the initial (or proximate) phonological unit used in the segment-to-frame encoding process during speech planning in Korean.

Orthographic influence on spoken word identification: Behavioral and fMRI evidence

The current study investigated behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for orthographic influences on auditory word identification. To assess such influences, the proportion of similar sounding words (i.e. phonological neighbors) that were also spelled similarly (i.e., orthographic neighbors) was computed for each auditorily presented word as the Orthographic-to-Phonological Overlap Ratio (OPOR). Speech intelligibility was manipulated by presenting monosyllabic words in multi-talker babble at two signal-to-noise ratios: + 3 and + 10 dB SNR. Identification rates were lower for high overlap words in the challenging + 3 dB SNR condition. In addition, BOLD contrast increased with OPOR at the more difficult SNR, and decreased with OPOR under more favorable SNR conditions. Both voxel-based and region of interest analyses demonstrated robust effects of OPOR in several cingulo-opercular regions. However, contrary to prior theoretical accounts, no task-related activity was observed in posterior regions associated with phonological or orthographic processing. We suggest that, when processing is difficult, orthographic-to-phonological feature overlap increases the availability of competing responses, which then requires additional support from domain general performance systems in order to produce a single response.

Predicting Handwriting Difficulties Through Spelling Processes

This study examined whether spelling tasks contribute to the prediction of the handwriting status of children with poor and good handwriting skills in a cross-sectional study with 276 Spanish children from Grades 1 and 3. The main hypothesis was that the spelling tasks would predict the handwriting status of the children, although this influence would decrease with age due to a gradual automatization of handwriting skills. The results confirmed this hypothesis. Another interesting result was that the pattern of pseudoword and irregular word spellings as predictors of handwriting status changed from Grade 1 to Grade 3. In Grade 1, the pseudoword spelling task made a significant contribution, whereas the irregular word spelling task did not. The opposite pattern was found in Grade 3. These results may be a consequence of progressive acquisition of orthographic representations. The orthographic role of the task of writing the alphabet in order from memory in the prediction model was also analyzed. The writing of the alphabet in order from memory task made a significant contribution to the prediction of handwriting status of the children beyond the orthographic influence of spelling tasks. The additional effect of this task on the prediction of handwriting status is presumably due to the fact that this measure is based on fluency.

Graphophonology and anachronic phonology Notes on episodes in the history of pseudo-phonology

AbstractIn the present essay some of what have been the more influential conceptions of phonology are examined in the light of what I see as ‘intrusions’ into its domain, starting with a strand of orthographic influence. I am concerned with the extent to which various ‘phonological’ proposals might be described as ‘graphophonological’ rather than strictly phonological. This examination also reveals the interaction of the graphophonological impulse with the impact of other considerations that are not proper to synchronic phonology. Most pertinent here is the more familiarly controversial formulation as synchronic generalizations of what are substitutes for the diachronic regularities reflected in morphophonological alternations: what I call ‘anachronic’ phonology, associated, for the most part, with the conflation of morphophonology and phonology; another instance of ‘pseudo-phonology’. Scrutinized here are particularly proposals concerning sound structure associated with the classical littera, with the (‘taxonomic’) phoneme, and with the morphophoneme (or ‘systematic phoneme’). Finally, after an evaluation of an overtly graphophonological proposal, the orthographic rather than phonological value of ‘CVCV’ phonology is explored in relation to the inadequacies of the Linear B syllabary.

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.

Fonetične in ortografske interference pri govorjeni romunščini v Španiji

Članek Fonetične in ortografske interference pri govorjeni romunščini v Španiji prikaže z dvojne (fonetične in ortografske) perspektive nekaj pojavov, ki so nastali pri romunsko španskih stikih. Namen raziskave fonetičnega in ortografskega vpliva španščine na romunščino je identifikacija lingvističnih posledic, ki bi jih množično priseljevanje Romunov v Španijo lahko imelo.Pri analizi romunskega jezika priseljencev v romunskih skupnostih iz Španije smo zaznali dva načina fonetičnega prilagajanja: prilagajanje španskih izposojenk romunskemu fonetičnemu sistemu in prilagajanje romunskih besed španskemu fonetičnemu sistemu. Z vzporednim preučevanjem zvočnih in pisanih zapisov enajstih romunskih študentov v Španiji, v Castellón de la Plana, smo ugotovili, da se španske izposojenke fonetično prilagodijo romunskemu jeziku, pri pisavi pa te prilagoditve ne zaznamo.

How Does Learning to Read Affect Speech Perception?

Behavioral studies have demonstrated that learning to read and write affects the processing of spoken language. The present study investigates the neural mechanism underlying the emergence of such orthographic effects during speech processing. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to tease apart two competing hypotheses that consider this orthographic influence to be either a consequence of a change in the nature of the phonological representations during literacy acquisition or a consequence of online coactivation of the orthographic and phonological representations during speech processing. Participants performed an auditory lexical decision task in which the orthographic consistency of spoken words was manipulated and repetitive TMS was used to interfere with either phonological or orthographic processing by stimulating left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) or left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC), respectively. The advantage for consistently spelled words was removed only when the stimulation was delivered to SMG and not to vOTC, providing strong evidence that this effect arises at a phonological, rather than an orthographic, level. We propose a possible mechanistic explanation for the role of SMG in phonological processing and how this is affected by learning to read.

영어 모음사이 자음의 인지와 발화에서 철자의 영향: 파일럿 연구

한국어에서는 모음사이에서 겹자음이 나타날 수 있으나 영어에서는 이것이 불가능하므로 영어를 배우는 한국 학생들이 <TEX>$su\underline{mm}er$</TEX>와 같이 겹자음 철자를 포함하는 단어들을 발음할 때 철자의 겹자음을 모두 발음하는 오류를 흔히 범한다. 따라서 본 파일럿 연구에서는 한국 학생들이 영어 겹자음 철자를 어떻게 발음하고 인지하는지 살펴보기 위해서 영어 겹자음과 단자음의 (유사) 최소변별쌍으로 구성된 36개의 실제어를 20명의 대학생이 듣고 발음하는 인지와 발화 실험을 실행하였다. 실험 결과 한국 학생들은 철자의 영향으로 영어 단자음 철자 단어를 발음할 때보다 겹자음 철자 단어를 발음할 때 이중으로 길게 발음하는 오류를 더 흔히 범해서 겹자음 철자 단어의 정확율보다 단자음의 정확율이 크게 높았으며, 인지의 경우에도 마찬가지로 단자음 철자 단어의 인지 정확율이 겹자음 철자보다 확연하게 높았다. 덧붙여, 한국 학생들의 영어 유성 파열음의 발화 오류율이 낮은 이유를 한국어 음운 체계의 전이로 설명하였다. 끝으로, 한국학생들의 발화를 스펙트로그램을 통해서 분석함으로써 영어 단자음 철자보다는 겹자음 철자에서 더 많은 발화오류를 일으키는 것도 보여주었고 또한 교육적인 함축점도 제안하였다. While Korean allows the same consonants at the coda of the preceding syllable and at the onset of the following syllable, English does not allow the geminate consonants in the same intervocalic position. Due to this difference between Korean and English, Korean learners of English tend to incorrectly produce geminate consonants for English geminate graphemes as in <TEX>$su\underline{mm}er$</TEX>. Based on this observation, a pilot study was designed to investigate how Korean learners of English perceive and produce English doubleton graphemes and singleton graphemes. Twenty Korean college students were asked to perform a forced-choice perception test as well as a production test for the 36 real word stimuli which consist of (near) minimal pairs of singleton and doubleton graphemes. The result showed that the accuracy rates for the words with singleton graphemes were higher than those for the words with doubleton graphemes both in perception and production because the subjects misperceived and misproduced the doubleton graphemes as geminates due to orthographic influence. In addition, the low error rates of the word with voiced stops were accounted for by Korean language transfer. Further, spectrographic analyses were provided where more production errors were witnessed in doubleton grapheme words than singleton grapheme words. Finally, pedagogical implications are provided.

Orthographic influence on speech processing: a combined TMS and behavioral study

Orthographic influence on speech processing: a combined TMS and behavioral study

Incomplete neutralization and other sub-phonemic durational differences in production and perception: evidence from Dutch

Words which are expected to contain the same surface string of segments may, under identical prosodic circumstances, sometimes be realized with slight differences in duration. Some researchers have attributed such effects to differences in the words’ underlying forms (incomplete neutralization), while others have suggested orthographic influence and extremely careful speech as the cause. In this paper, we demonstrate such sub-phonemic durational differences in Dutch, a language which some past research has found not to have such effects. Past literature has also shown that listeners can often make use of incomplete neutralization to distinguish apparent homophones. We extend perceptual investigations of this topic, and show that listeners can perceive even durational differences which are not consistently observed in production. We further show that a difference which is primarily orthographic rather than underlying can also create such durational differences. We conclude that a wide variety of factors, in addition to underlying form, can induce speakers to produce slight durational differences which listeners can also use in perception.

The phonology of English loan-words in Korean

It is generally accepted that the processes whereby loanwords are “copied” to the target language's phonology are fundamentally different from language-internal sound changes. Unlike language-internal sound changes, which occur when the speakers responsible are fully capable of the phonology of the input “source” and the sound changes occur across the entire lexicon, loans tend to be ad hoc, show inconsistent correspondences, and need only meet well-formedness conditions within the target language. This paper argues that this is true of small-scale borrowing, but large-scale borrowing, by contrast, occurs only if the target-language speakers responsible for the loans have a certain degree of competency in the source language and its phonology, and that consequently large-scale copying is parallel to language-internal sound changes, and can be reduced to sound change rules. It is argued that the correspondences found in forms of English loans in Korean may be reduced to a set of sequenced rules, and that most exceptions to these rules are explicable in much the same way as exceptions to language-internal sound change rules: different source varieties, and orthographic influence.

The Use of L1 Reading Strategies in L2 Reading

This study investigated first language (L1) orthographic influence on cognitive processing involved in second language (L2) reading. Using a fundamental unit of representation, three orthographic systems (i.e., alphabet, syllabary, and logography) can be categorized into two types: morphography and phonography. Previous L1 reading research has suggested that different strategies are used for phonological recoding by morphographic and phonographic readers. This study tested the possibility that these L1 recoding strategies are transferred and utilized in L2 reading. A cross-linguistic experiment involving adult L2 learners of English with contrasting L1 orthographic backgrounds (Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, and English—for native control) was conducted. The results indicate that reading among phonographic readers (Arabic, Spanish, and English) is seriously impaired when essential phonological information is inaccessible. Similar phonological inaccessibility, in contrast, apparently does not affect the reading performance of Japanese, or morphographic, readers. Further, the study demonstrated, first, that phonological inaccessibility exerts differential effects on the reading processes of phonographic and morphographic readers and, second, that L2 readers from different L1 orthographic backgrounds utilize their L1 strategies in reading English as an L2. Hence, the findings of the study verify cognitive strategy transfer during L2 reading.