Phonological Coding Research Articles

The distinctive role of vowel harmony in visual word recognition: The case of Turkish.

Vowel harmony is a phenomenon in which the vowels in a word share some features (e.g., frontness vs. backness). It occurs in several families of languages (e.g., Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages) and serves as an effective segmenting cue in continuous speech and when reading compound words. The present study examined whether vowel harmony also plays a role in visual word recognition. We chose Turkish, a language with four front and four back vowels in which approximately 75% of words are harmonious. If vowel harmony contributes to the formation of coherent phonological codes during lexical access, harmonious words will reach a stable orthographic-phonological state more rapidly than disharmonious words. To test this hypothesis, in Experiment 1, we selected two types of monomorphemic Turkish words: harmonious (containing only front vowels or back vowels) and disharmonious (containing front and back vowels)-a parallel manipulation was applied to the pseudowords. Results showed faster lexical decisions for harmonious than disharmonious words, whereas vowel harmony did not affect pseudowords. In Experiment 2, where all words were harmonious, we found a small but reliable advantage for disharmonious over harmonious pseudowords. These findings suggest that vowel harmony helps the formation of stable phonological codes in Turkish words, but it does not play a key role in pseudoword rejection.

The inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus correlates with early precursors of mathematics and reading before the start of formal schooling

Diffusion-weighted imaging studies in preschoolers have almost exclusively been done in the field of reading. As a result, virtually nothing is known about white matter tracts associated with individual differences in mathematics at this age. Studying the preschoolers' brain is crucial because it allows us to identify individual differences in brain anatomy without influences of formal mathematics and reading instruction. To fill this gap, we investigated for the first time before the start of formal school entry the associations between white matter tracts and precursors of mathematics and reading simultaneously. We also investigated whether these associations were specific to mathematics and to reading, or not. We focused on four bilateral white matter tracts (arcuate fasciculus (direct, anterior), inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus), which have been previously correlated with mathematical performance in older children and with reading performance in children of a similar age as the current study. Participants were 56 5-year-old children (Mage = 67 months; SD = 1.8), none of which received formal instruction. Our results showed an association between the bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and precursors of mathematics (numerical ordering, numeral knowledge) and reading (phonological awareness, letter knowledge). Follow-up regression analyses revealed that the associations found with the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus were neither specific to mathematics nor specific to reading. These findings suggest that, already before the start of formal schooling, the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus might be related to the neural overlap between mathematics and reading. This overlap potentially reflects one of their many shared mechanisms, such as the reliance on phonological codes or the processing of visual symbols, and these mechanisms should be exploited in future studies.

Orthographic and Phonological Code Activation in Deaf and Hearing Readers.

Grainger et al. (2006) were the first to use ERP masked priming to explore the differing contributions of phonological and orthographic representations to visual word processing. Here we adapted their paradigm to examine word processing in deaf readers. We investigated whether reading-matched deaf and hearing readers (n = 36) exhibit different ERP effects associated with the activation of orthographic and phonological codes during word processing. In a visual masked priming paradigm, participants performed a go/no-go categorization task (detect an occasional animal word). Critical target words were preceded by orthographically-related (transposed letter - TL) or phonologically-related (pseudohomophone - PH) masked non-word primes were contrasted with the same target words preceded by letter substitution (control) non-words primes. Hearing readers exhibited typical N250 and N400 priming effects (greater negativity for control compared to TL or PH primed targets), and the TL and PH priming effects did not differ. For deaf readers, the N250 PH priming effect was later (250-350 ms), and they showed a reversed N250 priming effect for TL primes in this time window. The N400 TL and PH priming effects did not differ between groups. For hearing readers, those with better phonological and spelling skills showed larger early N250 PH and TL priming effects (150-250 ms). For deaf readers, those with better phonological skills showed a larger reversed TL priming effect in the late N250 window. We speculate that phonological knowledge modulates how strongly deaf readers rely on whole-word orthographic representations and/or the mapping from sublexical to lexical representations.

Do readers here what they sea?: Effects of lexicality, predictability, and individual differences on the phonological preview benefit

For decades, researchers have debated whether readers benefit from translating visual word forms into phonological codes. A focus of this debate has been on the earliest moments of processing when a word is perceived in parafoveal vision (i.e., phonological preview benefit). A recent meta-analysis (Vasilev et al., 2019) concluded that the phonological preview benefit may be small and unreliable but they did not take into account potentially important stimulus-level or participant-level factors that varied across the included studies. Therefore, we conducted two well-powered experiments that systematically investigated the effects of sentence constraint, preview lexicality, and participant language skills on the phonological preview benefit effect. We found phonological preview benefits that were larger in high versus low constraint sentences, larger for words than pseudowords, and larger for better spellers. We conclude that phonological codes do facilitate early word recognition during reading, but that the phonological preview benefit magnitude depends on subject- and stimulus-level factors.

The Effect of Consanguineous Marriages on Arab Offspring in the Arab Community

To better understand the effect of intergenerational consanguineous marriages on the onset and severity of dyslexia, this study focused on investigating the frequency of dyslexia in diverse family backgrounds, including consanguineous and non-consanguineous spouses. Despite the advance of modernization and globalization, certain cultures that are mainly focused in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, continue to prioritize and practice family marriage and this is despite the warnings and recommendations of global health organizations. Dyslexia is a common learning disability that affects the development of language, and its main effect appears as difficulties in reading, spelling and decoding. This disability is related to phonological problems and not to intellectual ability. The reading and spelling errors are strongly influenced by heredity and genetics, with approximately 50% hereditary influence and genetic variables that contribute to the appearance of the disability among the offspring. The study compares the ability to deal with phonological and orthographic challenges in dyslexic children born from marriages from different marriage backgrounds, relatives and non-relatives, to peers. Phonological coding, spoken language abilities, working memory and reading comprehension are among the genetic and neurological aspects that have been studied.

Different encoding of legal and illegal speech sequences: beyond phonetic planning?

ABSTRACTTransforming linguistic codes into articulated speech is thought to rely on different phonetic (motor speech) encoding/planning processes for practiced sequences and for unpracticed/uncommon speech sequences. However, transforming phonological codes into articulation likely involves processes beyond phonetic planning, going on even during articulation. Here we sought behavioural, acoustic and brain dynamics differences in the preparation of matched common/legal and uncommon/illegal speech sequences in 20 participants. Illegal syllables were initialised faster – contrary to what is generally expected -, had longer acoustic duration and differed from legal syllables in ERP waveform amplitudes and microstates in a time-window preceding and following the vocal onset. The pattern of results suggests that speech plans are of different size for legal and illegal syllables, and impact on the parametrisation of the corresponding motor programmes, allowing fast execution of the segmentalised illegal sequences for which incremental speech programming continues during articulation.

No Correlation Between Articulation Speed and Silent Reading Rate when Adults Read Short Texts.

Silent reading often involves phonological encoding of the text in addition to orthographic processing. The nature of the phonological code is debated, however: Is it an abstract code or does it contain information about the pronunciation of the visual stimulus? To answer this question, we investigated the relationship between articulation speed and reading speed, both for silent reading and reading aloud. We investigated whether people with fast articulation speed read faster than people with slow articulation speed. We recruited 94 participants, who in a Zoom session were asked to read short texts silently or aloud. They were also asked to talk about their lives and say the numbers 1-10 or the months of the year as quickly as possible. Finally, they completed an online vocabulary test and an author recognition test. Multiple regression analysis and cluster analysis showed that although the speed of reading aloud and silent reading correlated to some extent, they belonged to two different clusters. Reading aloud was mainly related to talking fluency and articulation speed, while silent reading was more related to vocabulary and knowledge about fiction authors. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the phonological code in silent reading typically does not contain articulatory information, although our data do not rule out the possibility that this may be the case for a small percentage of people or when people read more difficult texts.

Examining speech-based phonological recoding during reading for adolescent deaf signers.

Much of the debate regarding literacy development in deaf and hard-of-hearing readers surrounds whether there is dependence on phonological decoding of print to speech for such readers, and the literature is mixed. While some reports of deaf children and adults demonstrate the influence of speech-based processing during reading, others find little to no evidence of speech-sound activation. In order to examine the role of speech-based phonological codes when reading, we utilized eye-tracking to examine eye-gaze behaviors employed by deaf children and a control group of hearing primary-school children when encountering target words in sentences. The target words were of three types: correct, homophonic errors, and nonhomophonic errors. We examined eye-gaze fixations when first encountering target words and, if applicable, when rereading those words. The results revealed that deaf and hearing readers differed in their eye-movement behaviors when re-reading the words, but they did not demonstrate differences for first encounters with the words. Hearing readers treated homophonic and nonhomophonic error words differently during their second encounter with the target while deaf readers did not, suggesting that deaf signers did not engage in phonological decoding to the same degree as hearing readers did. Further, deaf signers performed fewer overall regressions to target words than hearing readers, suggesting that they depended less on regressions to resolve errors in the text. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Chinese Clinical Named Entity Recognition From Electronic Medical Records Based on Multisemantic Features by Using Robustly Optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representation From Transformers Pretraining Approach Whole Word Masking and Convolutional Neural Networks: Model Development and Validation

Clinical electronic medical records (EMRs) contain important information on patients' anatomy, symptoms, examinations, diagnoses, and medications. Large-scale mining of rich medical information from EMRs will provide notable reference value for medical research. With the complexity of Chinese grammar and blurred boundaries of Chinese words, Chinese clinical named entity recognition (CNER) remains a notable challenge. Follow-up tasks such as medical entity structuring, medical entity standardization, medical entity relationship extraction, and medical knowledge graph construction largely depend on medical named entity recognition effects. A promising CNER result would provide reliable support for building domain knowledge graphs, knowledge bases, and knowledge retrieval systems. Furthermore, it would provide research ideas for scientists and medical decision-making references for doctors and even guide patients on disease and health management. Therefore, obtaining excellent CNER results is essential. We aimed to propose a Chinese CNER method to learn semantics-enriched representations for comprehensively enhancing machines to understand deep semantic information of EMRs by using multisemantic features, which makes medical information more readable and understandable. First, we used Robustly Optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers Pretraining Approach Whole Word Masking (RoBERTa-wwm) with dynamic fusion and Chinese character features, including 5-stroke code, Zheng code, phonological code, and stroke code, extracted by 1-dimensional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to obtain fine-grained semantic features of Chinese characters. Subsequently, we converted Chinese characters into square images to obtain Chinese character image features from another modality by using a 2-dimensional CNN. Finally, we input multisemantic features into Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory with Conditional Random Fields to achieve Chinese CNER. The effectiveness of our model was compared with that of the baseline and existing research models, and the features involved in the model were ablated and analyzed to verify the model's effectiveness. We collected 1379 Yidu-S4K EMRs containing 23,655 entities in 6 categories and 2007 self-annotated EMRs containing 118,643 entities in 7 categories. The experiments showed that our model outperformed the comparison experiments, with F1-scores of 89.28% and 84.61% on the Yidu-S4K and self-annotated data sets, respectively. The results of the ablation analysis demonstrated that each feature and method we used could improve the entity recognition ability. Our proposed CNER method would mine the richer deep semantic information in EMRs by multisemantic embedding using RoBERTa-wwm and CNNs, enhancing the semantic recognition of characters at different granularity levels and improving the generalization capability of the method by achieving information complementarity among different semantic features, thus making the machine semantically understand EMRs and improving the CNER task accuracy.

Exploring the use of phonological and semantic representations in working memory.

In the traditional conception of working memory for word lists, phonological codes are used primarily, and semantic codes are often discarded or ignored. Yet, other evidence indicates an important role for semantic codes. We carried out a preplanned set of four experiments to determine whether phonological and semantic codes are used similarly or differently. In each trial, random lists of one, two, three, four, six, or eight words were followed by a probe to be judged present in the list or absent from it. Sometimes, a probe was absent from the list but rhymed with a list item (in Experiments 1 and 2) or was a synonym of a list item (in Experiments 3 and 4). A probe that was similar to a list item was to be rejected just like other nontarget probes, a reject-similar use (in Experiments 1 and 3), or it was to be placed in the same category as list items, an accept-similar use (in Experiments 2 and 4). The results were comparable in the accept-similar use of both phonological and semantic codes. However, the reject-similar use was interestingly different. Rejecting rhyming items was more difficult than rejecting control words, as expected, whereas rejecting synonyms was easier than rejecting control words, presumably due to a recall-to-reject process. This effect increased with memory load. We discuss theoretically important differences between the use of phonology and semantics in working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Irrelevant speech impairs serial recall of verbal but not spatial items in children and adults

Immediate serial recall of visually presented items is reliably impaired by task-irrelevant speech that the participants are instructed to ignore (“irrelevant speech effect,” ISE). The ISE is stronger with changing speech tokens (words or syllables) when compared to repetitions of single tokens (“changing-state effect,” CSE). These phenomena have been attributed to sound-induced diversions of attention away from the focal task (attention capture account), or to specific interference of obligatory, involuntary sound processing with either the integrity of phonological traces in a phonological short-term store (phonological loop account), or the efficiency of a domain-general rehearsal process employed for serial order retention (changing-state account). Aiming to further explore the role of attention, phonological coding, and serial order retention in the ISE, we analyzed the effects of steady-state and changing-state speech on serial order reconstruction of visually presented verbal and spatial items in children (n = 81) and adults (n = 80). In the verbal task, both age groups performed worse with changing-state speech (sequences of different syllables) when compared with steady-state speech (one syllable repeated) and silence. Children were more impaired than adults by both speech sounds. In the spatial task, no disruptive effect of irrelevant speech was found in either group. These results indicate that irrelevant speech evokes similarity-based interference, and thus pose difficulties for the attention-capture and the changing-state account of the ISE.

Exceptional Speech Recognition Outcomes After Cochlear Implantation: Lessons From Two Case Studies.

Individual differences and variability in outcomes following cochlear implantation (CI) in patients with hearing loss remain significant unresolved clinical problems. Case reports of specific individuals allow for detailed examination of the information processing mechanisms underlying variability in outcomes. Two adults who displayed exceptionally good postoperative CI outcomes shortly after activation were administered a novel battery of auditory, speech recognition, and neurocognitive processing tests. A case study of two adult CI recipients with postlingually acquired hearing loss who displayed excellent postoperative speech recognition scores within 3 months of initial activation. Preoperative City University of New York sentence testing and a postoperative battery of sensitive speech recognition tests were combined with auditory and visual neurocognitive information processing tests to uncover their strengths, weaknesses, and milestones. Preactivation CUNY auditory-only (A) scores were < 5% correct while the auditory + visual (A + V) scores were > 74%. Acoustically with their CIs, both participants' scores on speech recognition, environmental sound identification and speech in noise tests exceeded average CI users scores by 1-2 standard deviations. On nonacoustic visual measures of language and neurocognitive functioning, both participants achieved above average scores compared with normal hearing adults in vocabulary knowledge, rapid phonological coding of visually presented words and nonwords, verbal working memory, and executive functioning. Measures of multisensory (A + V) speech recognition and visual neurocognitive functioning were associated with excellent speech recognition outcomes in two postlingual adult CI recipients. These neurocognitive information processing domains may underlie the exceptional speech recognition performance of these two patients and offer new directions for research explaining variability in postimplant outcomes. Results further suggest that current clinical outcome measures should be expanded beyond the conventional speech recognition measures to include more sensitive robust tests of speech recognition as well as neurocognitive measures of working memory, vocabulary, lexical access, and executive functioning.

Bottom-up processes dominate early word recognition in toddlers

This study set out to investigate whether the ‘phonological onset preference effect’ often reported in adult studies using the visual world task (i.e., increased attention to an object that is phonologically-related to a spoken-target word, such as boat-bear) is also contingent upon toddler participants having sufficient preview time to inspect the picture stimuli. Picture preview is thought to support the activation of phonological codes which can then be matched to the phonological representations extracted from incoming speech signals and the picture stimuli, supporting the ‘phonological mapping hypothesis’. We found that both toddlers and adults were able to show an early phonological onset preference in short preview conditions, though, adults' early phonological onset preferences in the short preview condition was extinguished by the presence of a semantic competitor, replicating previous adult findings (Huettig & McQueen, 2007). Removal of a semantic competitor reinstated the phonological onset preference effect under short preview conditions for adults. Our findings indicate that toddlers are driven more by bottom-up, phonological information when selecting a referent in a visual world task, as compared to adults who are more inclined to exploit top-down, semantic information when directing their attention to a visual object, especially when there is insufficient preview time. We propose that, when implicit naming is improbable in short-preview conditions, a phonological onset preference effect is driven by mapping on the visual-semantic levels, which is more susceptible to top-down influences.

Identifying dyslexia at the university: assessing phonological coding is not enough.

A dyslexia diagnosis in Denmark can have significant consequences for individuals, as support is not available to others with reading difficulties. Currently, the diagnosis is given solely on the basis of an electronically administered test consisting of two tasks assessing grapheme-phoneme correspondences. To examine whether the Danish diagnostic test is sufficient to identify university students with dyslexia, we compared the performance of 239 Danish university students who reported literacy difficulties and were tested for dyslexia with the Danish diagnostic test on three word-level tests (low-frequency word reading, high-frequency word reading and spelling to dictation) with the performance of separate control groups for each test: 220, 212 and 218 students, respectively. The results showed that 61% of students labelled "not dyslexic" by the Danish diagnostic test performed significantly worse than controls on at least two out of three word-level tests. In terms of self-report of literacy difficulties, students labelled "not dyslexic" by the diagnostic test were indistinguishable from those labelled "dyslexic." These findings suggest that the current method of diagnosing dyslexia in Denmark is too narrow and that adding a few simple tests of word reading and spelling would minimize the risk of overlooking students in need of literacy support.

The Precentral Gyrus Contributions to the Early Time-Course of Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion.

As part of silent reading models, visual orthographic information is transduced into an auditory phonological code in a process of grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC). This process is often identified with lateral temporal-parietal regions associated with auditory phoneme encoding. However, the role of articulatory phonemic representations and the precentral gyrus in GPC is ambiguous. Though the precentral gyrus is implicated in many functional MRI studies of reading, it is not clear if the time course of activity in this region is consistent with the precentral gyrus being involved in GPC. We recorded cortical electrophysiology during a bimodal match/mismatch task from eight patients with perisylvian subdural electrodes to examine the time course of neural activity during a task that necessitated GPC. Patients made a match/mismatch decision between a 3-letter string and the following auditory bi-phoneme. We characterized the distribution and timing of evoked broadband high gamma (70-170 Hz) as well as phase-locking between electrodes. The precentral gyrus emerged with a high concentration of broadband high gamma responses to visual and auditory language as well as mismatch effects. The pars opercularis, supramarginal gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus were also involved. The precentral gyrus showed strong phase-locking with the caudal fusiform gyrus during letter-string presentation and with surrounding perisylvian cortex during the bimodal visual-auditory comparison period. These findings hint at a role for precentral cortex in transducing visual into auditory codes during silent reading.

Neural mechanisms and time course of the age-related word frequency effect in language production

<p id="p00005">The word frequency effect refers to the phenomenon of processing high-frequency words faster and more accurately than processing low-frequency words in language production. As the age increases in adulthood, the word frequency effect will also change. The Transmission Deficit Hypothesis suggests that ageing weakens the connection between the stored language information nodes, and the word frequency effect increases further. In contrast, according to the Rank Frequency Account, the relative word frequency and the word frequency effect remain unchanged; thus, it can be deduced that ageing does not change the word frequency effect. Furthermore, the Logogen Model assumes that the word frequency decreases with an increase in experience and contact, thereby predicting a reduction of the word frequency effect as the age increases. <p id="p00008">There are differences in the age-related word frequency effect in language production. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the word frequency effect among the elder is greater than that among the young. However, some studies have shown that elderly people have less or no difference in the word frequency effect in comparison with young people, suggesting that the differences in the word frequency effect depending on age may be caused by differences in tasks, stimuli, and individual cognitive abilities. However, the word frequency effect is relatively stable throughout the life cycle. More precisely, it is more difficult to name low-frequency words than high-frequency words for both the young and the elder. There is an age difference between the young and the elder in processing low-frequency words. Compared with the elder, the younger people have higher accuracy and higher activation levels in language-related brain areas (e.g., insula and middle temporal gyrus) and cognitive control-related brain areas (e.g., cingulate cortex). Moreover, there are differences in the word frequency effect between the verb naming task and the noun naming task. In the action picture naming task, high-frequency words activate specific brain regions, whereas in the object naming task, only low-frequency words activate of specific brain regions. <p id="p00007">The word frequency effect may occur in different stages of language production. Previous studies have demonstrated that the word frequency effect may occur in the lemma selection, the connection stage between lemma selection and phonological code retrieval or in the phonological code retrieval in spoken language production. The word frequency effect in writing production appears later than in spoken language production and may occur in the orthographic word form. In addition, there are differences in the time course of the word frequency effect between the younger and older individuals. For the elder, with an increase in age a decline in general cognitive ability, the time course of the word frequency effect is slightly delayed when compared with the young. <p id="p00006">Some studies also explored the change in the word frequency effect in patients with degenerative diseases, suggesting that it can be used as a sensitive indicator for early detection and diagnosis of related diseases. The word frequency effect and the acquisition age effect both impact on the word processing, however, during different stages. The acquisition age affects the visual and semantic processing of the vocabulary, whereas the word frequency effect merely acts on vocabulary retrieval. In the future, we can further distinguish the influence of word frequency effect from the age of acquisition effect on ageing effect of language production, and extend the studies to patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

What are the letters e and é in a language with vowel reduction? The case of Catalan

AbstractAlthough the Latin-based orthographies of most Western languages employ vowels with accent marks (e.g., é vs. e), extant models of letter and word recognition are agnostic as to whether these accented letters and their non-accented counterparts are represented by common or separate abstract units. Recent research in French with a masked priming alphabetic decision task was interpreted as favoring the idea that accented and non-accented vowels are represented by separate abstract orthographic units (orthographic account: é↛e and e↛é; Chetail &amp; Boursain, 2019). However, a more parsimonious explanation is that salient (accented) vowels are less perceptually similar to non-salient (non-accented) vowels than vice versa (perceptual account: e→é, but é↛e; Perea et al., 2021a; Tversky, 1977). To adjudicate between the two accounts, we conducted a masked priming alphabetic decision experiment in Catalan, a language with a complex orthography-to-phonology mapping for non-accented vowels (e.g., e→/e/, /ə/, /ε/). Results showed faster responses in the identity than in the visually similar condition for accented targets (é–É &lt; e–É), but not for non-accented targets (e–E = é–E). Neither of the above accounts can fully capture this pattern. We propose an explanation based on the rapid activation of both orthographic and phonological codes.

Kekemeliği Olan ve Olmayan Çocukların Çalışma Belleği Performanslarının Karşılaştırılması

Introduction: The aim of this study is to compare working memory performance between children with and without stuttering. The second aim of the study is to examine the relationship between stuttering frequency and working memory performance in CWS.Method: The study sample included 20 children with stuttering and 20 children without stuttering and any other concominant speech and language disorders. The participants were matched for age and gender. Working Memory Scale was used for the assessment of working memory. Data from CWS and CWNS were compared with independent samples t-test or Mann-Whitney U test based on normality analyses. The relation between the variables in CWS was examined with Pearson correlation analysis. Also, the percentage of stuttered syllables in a speech sample was calculated in children with stuttering.Results: There was not a significant difference in verbal and visual memory subtests scores between the children with and without stuttering. However, the verbal memory subtest scores were lower in the children with stuttering.Discussion: Despite the insignificant results, the study attracts attention to deficits in phonological memory and phonological coding in children with stuttering. In addition, although there was not a significant difference in the visual memory subtests, the children who stutter displayed higher performance in the visual memory subtests. This could be considered as a compensatory mechanism.Conclusion, Limitations and Suggestions: It can be suggested that further longitudinal studies having larger samples including different age groups, using different behavioral measurement tools and brain imaging techniques may shed light on the issue.

APF Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Applications of Psychology: Frederick J. Morrison.

This award recognizes a distinguished career and enduring contribution to applications of psychology. Frederick Morrison, PhD, is recognized for pioneering research linking psychology and education. He was one of the first psychologists to utilize the information-processing approach to study childhood reading disorders, demonstrating that dyslexic children do not suffer primarily from a visual-perceptual deficit but from a language-based phonological coding problem. He discovered and exploited a natural experiment, termed school cutoff, to study the causal impact of early schooling on children's language, cognitive, social, and academic skills. His findings confirmed the critical role of instructional practices on children's growth but also that the most effective instruction varied with the skill level of the child. Based on these insights, with colleague Carol Connor, Morrison developed and implemented an intervention to individualize student instruction, confirming that children benefit from different types of instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Recognizing spoken words in semantically-anomalous sentences: Effects of executive control in early-implanted deaf children with cochlear implants

Objectives To investigate differences in speech, language, and neurocognitive functioning in normal hearing (NH) children and deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) using anomalous sentences. Anomalous sentences block the use of downstream predictive coding during speech recognition, allowing for investigation of rapid phonological coding and executive functioning. Methods: Extreme groups were extracted from samples of children with CIs and NH peers (ages 9 to 17) based on the 7 highest and 7 lowest scores on the Harvard-Anomalous sentence test (Harvard-A). The four groups were compared on measures of speech, language, and neurocognitive functioning. Results: The 7 highest-scoring CI users and the 7 lowest-scoring NH peers did not differ in Harvard-A scores but did differ significantly on measures of neurocognitive functioning. Compared to low-performing NH peers, highperforming children with CIs had significantly lower nonword repetition scores but higher nonverbal IQ scores, greater verbal WM capacity, and excellent EF skills related to inhibition, shifting attention/mental flexibility and working memory updating. Discussion: High performing deaf children with CIs are able to compensate for their sensory deficits and weaknesses in automatic phonological coding of speech by engaging in a slow effortful mode of information processing involving inhibition, working memory and executive functioning.