Phonological Manipulation Research Articles

Phonemic manipulation in Japanese: an fMRI study

Phonological awareness is the ability to manipulate abstract phonological representations of language and is crucial to the process of learning to read. The neural substrates underlying this appear to be modality-independent at least in alphabetic languages. Japanese language has different orthographic “kana” system, in which each “kana” character strictly corresponds to a syllable. To investigate the neural substrates underlying phonological manipulation of the Japanese language, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used. Neuroimaging data were obtained from adult healthy volunteers during auditory and visual vowel exchange tasks, identical except for the modality of stimuli presentation: a voice and Japanese “kana” characters. Cerebellar vermis was activated by vowel exchange tasks of both modalities. The posterior parts of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) were active during the auditory tasks, suggesting that phonological representations of auditory stimuli are manipulated in this area. These findings are consistent with the previous studies with alphabetic languages. In contrast, the intraparietal sulci, which has been implicated for visuospatial tasks, was active during the visual tasks. This modality-dependent activation may indicate that the simple orthographic rule of the Japanese allows an alternate visual strategy to conduct the phonological awareness task, bypassing manipulation of phonological representation.

Targeting phonological representations can help in the early stages of reading in a non‐dominant language

It is not known whether children who are struggling with reading in a non‐dominant language will respond better to a phonological intervention or to one that addresses oral proficiency. Multilingual seven‐to nine‐year‐olds showing reading difficulty in a non‐dominant language, English, were given a three‐week intervention in phonological skills or in language proficiency and were compared with two control groups (one with reading difficulties and one with no reading difficulties) who received a non‐language based intervention. The group receiving the explicit phonological instructions showed significantly better gain in reading and spelling measures than the language proficiency and reading difficulties control group, but did not reach the levels of the noreading‐difficulty group. The phonological intervention was particularly effective for children with the lowest single‐word reading scores. We suggest that the intervention helped to catalyse the fine‐tuning of the phonological domain, making phonological representations optimally available for decoding, phonological manipulations and literacy development.

Communication mode and the processing of printed words: evidence from readers with prelingually acquired deafness.

The aim of this study was to elucidate how the primary communication background of prelingual deafened readers affects the way they mediate the recognition of written words. A computer-controlled research paradigm (a semantic decision task) asking for the categorization of familiar Hebrew nouns was used to investigate the participants' sensibility to phonological and orthographic manipulations in the target stimuli. Two groups of readers with hearing impairments and a hearing control group participated in the study. Twenty-seven of the participants with deafness (mean grade 6.9) were raised by hearing parents advocating a strict oral approach at home and at school. For an additional 22 students who were deaf (mean grade 6.9), the majority of them children of deaf parents, Israeli Sign Language was the preferred means of communication. The mean grade of the 39 participants in the hearing control group was 6.5. Findings indicate that both the hearing participants and the participants with prelingual deafness who were trained to communicate orally recoded visually presented target words phonologically. No such evidence was found for participants with deafness who were native signers. Although participants from signing backgrounds seemed to generate nonphonological representations of written words, there was no evidence that for them, the absence of recoding to phonology detrimentally affected on their ability to process such representations flexibly. In all, findings suggest a causal link between an individual's processing strategy for some written words and the modal nature of his or her primary language.

Dyslexia the Invisible, Treatable Disorder: the Story of Einstein's Ninja Turtles

In this longitudinal, multiple case study, I describe and compare the early development, instructional history, repeated administrations of a test battery, and response to instructional intervention for seven boys (in third to fifth grade at time of intervention), who were brain imaged prior to intervention and found to differ from controls in brain chemical activation during a phonological task. The instructional intervention was phonologically driven reading instruction in a science/reading workshop. At follow-up, phonological skills (phonological manipulation, phonological memory, and phonological decoding) had improved compared to initial assessment, but the boys were better at silent reading comprehension than oral reading, and had rate impairments and considerable difficulties with writing skills (handwriting automaticity, spelling, and speed of composing). Based on recent research on the genetic phenotype (language markers) and on early intervention, a case is made that dyslexia should be diagnosed early in schooling, on the basis of markers for deficient language processes and response to early intervention, so that appropriate instruction can be instituted early and continued throughout schooling as long as necessary. Dyslexia is a developmental disorder that manifests in different ways at different developmental stages, initially as difficulty in learning letters and letter-sound correspondence, next in learning to read words accurately, and finally in impaired reading rate and written expression skills (handwriting automaticity, spelling, and compositional fluency).

Phonological alexia in Japanese: a case study

A pattern of highly selective impairment in reading nonwords is described in a Japanese patient, TY, who achieved essentially normal performance on most of a range of other language abilities tested. Other prominent features of TY's reading were: (1) almost flawless reading of all types of familiar words in both kanji and kana; (2) differential performance, both quantitative and qualitative, on three types of nonwords constructed by altering real words in various ways; (3) dramatic improvement in pronunciation of orthographic nonwords with phonologically familiar pronunciations (pseudohomophones); and (4) from near-normal to impaired performance on different types of mora-based phonological manipulation tasks. With reference to the so-called “triangle” framework of reading (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996; Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989), these characteristics are interpreted to arise from an impaired phonological production system in which activation tends to fall into familiar patterns c...

The Development of Phonological Abilities and Their Relation to Reading Acquisition

The relation between phonological abilities and reading acquisition and the interindividual variation in the development of different phonological manipulation skills were assessed for six 7-year-old Finnish nonreaders. Intensive time series data were collected by following the children for 13 months. Assessments were conducted every 4 weeks with five phonological manipulation tests. The results indicated gradual progress at the group level. However, analysis of the individual profiles indicated large interindividual variation in the rate of improvement and in the relation between different manipulation skills and reading acquisition.

Working Memory Deficits in Poor Comprehenders Reflect Underlying Language Impairments

Three experiments assessed memory skills in good and poor comprehenders, matched for decoding skill. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated phonological and semantic contributions to short-term memory by comparing serial recall for words varying in length, lexicality, and concreteness. Poor comprehenders showed normal sensitivity to phonological manipulations (length and lexicality) but, consistent with their semantic weaknesses, their recall of abstract words was poor. Experiment 3 investigated verbal and spatial working memory. While poor comprehenders achieved normal spatial spans, their verbal spans were impaired. These results are discussed within a theoretical framework in which the memory difficulties associated with poor reading comprehension are specific to the verbal domain and are a concomitant of language impairment, rather than a cause of reading comprehension failure.

Unintentional reading: Can phonological computation be controlled?

Abstract A common view in the reading literature is that words are often recognized by recourse to phonological recoding. The question addressed here concerns whether phonological recoding can be controlled, or whether it is computed (a) even when it is completely irrelevant to the task, and (b) can only hurt performance. Two Stroop type experiments are reported in which participants used a key press to indicate the print colour of an (irrelevant) letter string that sounded like a colour (e.g., BLOO). The sound of the colour word was always incongruent with the required response. Colour identification performance was impaired by the irrelevant letter strings relative to two baseline conditions. These results and others are consistent with the conclusion that a phonological code is computed under a variety of circumstances. The hypothesis that skilled readers transform print on the page into phonology in order to recognize words has been intensively pursued over the last several decades. Many investigators favor a single route model in which phonological coding is a necessary preliminary to visual recognition (e.g., Carello, Turvey, & Lukatela, 1992; Frost, 1998; Lukatela & Turvey, 1991, 1994; Perfetti, Zhang, & Berent, 1992; Pexman & Lupker, 1995; Van Orden et al. 1992; Van Orden, Pennington & Stone, 1990). Other investigators argue in favor of the co-existence of a reading routine that activates lexical/semantic knowledge without prior phonological computation. This orthographic route operates in parallel with the phonological route (e.g., Baluch & Besner, 1991; Besner & Smith, 1992; Buchanan & Besner, 1993; Carr & Pollatsek, 1985; Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993; Coltheart & Rastle, 1994; Davelaar, Coltheart, Jonasson & Besner, 1978; Herdman & Beckett, 1996; Paap, Noel & Johansen 1992; Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg & Patterson, 1996; Waters & Seidenberg, 1985). How Controllable Is Phonological Computation? One consequence of the persistent report of phonological effects in visual recognition (e.g., spelling-sound regularity, homophone, and pseudohomophone effects) is a wide spread interest in a related but distinct issue that is the focus of the present investigation. That is, to what extent can the computation of a phonological code be thought of as a controllable set of processes given a printed input, as distinct from the issue of whether it is possible to exert any control over whether the products of phonological coding are used in making decisions about a response? Clearly, failing to find an effect of a phonological manipulation in some task speaks more directly to the latter issue than it does to the former because it might not be possible to control whether a phonological code is computed, but possible to control whether the products of such coding are used in formulating a response. In that vein, some investigators emphasize that there are stimulus and contextual manipulations which encourage participants to rely on the products of a nonphonological pathway in tasks like perceptual identification, naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization (e.g., Baluch & Besner, 1991; Besner, Twilley, McCann, & Seergobin, 1990; Davelaar, et al., 1978; Hawkins et al., 1976; Hudson & Bergman, 1985; Jared & Seidenberg, 1991; Paap et al., 1992; Seidenberg, Peterson, MacDonald, & Plaut, 1996; Tabossi & Laghi, 1992; Verstaen, Humphreys, Olson, & D'Ydewalle, 1996; Waters & Seidenberg, 1985). Other investigators take a stronger line and argue that the computation of phonology is obligatory, and even automatic (among many others, see Carello, Turvey, & Lukatela, 1992; Frost, 1997; Glushko, 1979; Katz & Frost, 1992; Lukatela & Turvey, 1994; Perfetti et al., 1992; Van Orden et al., 1992). For example: ...effect of phonological primes suggests a leading role in visual perception for a fast acting, automatic, assembled phonology. …

Phonology can help or hurt the perception of print.

Phonological manipulations affect performance in a letter search task that requires only a shallow level of processing. In Experiment 1, phonology reduced accuracy in the letter search task when a pseudohomophone (GAIM) contained a target letter ("i") that was missing in the spelling of its (nonpresented) sound-alike base word (GAME). In Experiment 2, phonology increased accuracy in the letter search task when the target letter was present in both the spelling of the pseudohomophone and the spelling of its sound-alike base word ("m" in GAIM and GAME). In Experiment 3, we showed that the phonology-hurts effect of Experiment 1 is not peculiar to nonword letter strings but generalizes to familiar words. In Experiment 4, we obtained a phonology-hurts effect on correct response times when stimuli were visible until participants responded (stimuli were not masked).

Phonology can help or hurt the perception of print.

Phonological manipulations affect performance in a letter search task that requires only a shallow level of processing. In Experiment 1, phonology reduced accuracy in the letter search task when a pseudohomophone (GAIM) contained a target letter ("i") that was missing in the spelling of its (nonpresented) sound-alike base word (GAME). In Experiment 2, phonology increased accuracy in the letter search task when the target letter was present in both the spelling of the pseudohomophone and the spelling of its sound-alike base word ("m" in GAIM and GAME). In Experiment 3, we showed that the phonology-hurts effect of Experiment 1 is not peculiar to nonword letter strings but generalizes to familiar words. In Experiment 4, we obtained a phonology-hurts effect on correct response times when stimuli were visible until participants responded (stimuli were not masked).

Phonological Alexia in Japanese: A Case Study

A pattern of highly selective impairment in reading nonwords is described in a Japanese patient, TY, who achieved essentially normal performance on most of a range of other language abilities tested. Other prominent features of TY's reading were: (1) almost flawless reading of all types of familiar words in both kanji and kana; (2) differential performance, both quantitative and qualitative, on three types of nonwords constructed by altering real words in various ways; (3) dramatic improvement in pronunciation of orthographic nonwords with phonologically familiar pronunciations (pseudohomophones); and (4) from near-normal to impaired performance on different types of mora-based phonological manipulation tasks. With reference to the so-called “triangle” framework of reading (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996; Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989), these characteristics are interpreted to arise from an impaired phonological production system in which activation tends to fall into familiar patterns c...

Transfer among phonological tasks in kindergarten: Essential instructional content.

The construct of phonological awareness was explored by examining the effects of instructional treatments on the development of specific and generalized phonological skills for kindergarten children. Sixty-six children with low phonological manipulation skills were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatments or a control condition: (a) auditory blending and segmenting with limited letter-sound correspondences; (b) a global array of phonological tasks, with letter-sound correspondences; or (c) only letter-sound instruction. Children in both treatments showed improved phonological abilities, which transferred to a reading analog task. Treated children achieved a level of phonological awareness comparable to that of higher skilled children. The combination of blending and segmenting instruction encouraged generalized phonological awareness; however, the ability to blend and segment accounted for more variance in reading analog scores than did other phonological tasks

Teaching Phonological Awareness to Young Children with Learning Disabilities

This study examined the feasibility of teaching phonological manipulation skills to preschool children with disabilities. Forty-seven children, 4-6 years old, enrolled in a special education preschool, were randomly assigned to receive training in one of three categories of phonological tasks (rhyming, blending, and segmenting) or a control group. Results indicated that children were able to make significant progress in each experimental category, but that they demonstrated little or no generalization either within a category (e.g., from one type of blending task to another type of blending task) or between categories (e.g., from blending to segmenting). Although the children's level of cognitive development significantly predicted some learning outcomes, it did not appear to limit the learning of phonological tasks.

Transfer among phonological manipulation skills.

Transfer among phonological manipulation skills.

Transfer among phonological manipulation skills.

Skills that require the manipulation of sounds that make up words are closely associated with the process of learning to read. This study involved an experimental analysis of the relations among phonological manipulation skills. Several of these skills were taught to 35 Head Start preschool children (M age = 5.2 years), and the degree to which learning 1 of these skills resulted in improved skill performance and accelerated learning of a 2nd skill was investigated. Instruction produced robust gains in skill performance and generalization of skills to novel instances. Posttest scores and data on students' efficiency of learning, however, offered no evidence of transfer across phonological manipulation skills