Reading Aloud Nonwords Research Articles

Orthography and Modality Influence Speech Production in Adults and Children.

The acquisition of literacy skills influences the perception and production of spoken language. We examined if orthography influences implicit processing in speech production in child readers and in adult readers with low and high reading proficiency. Children (n = 17), adults with typical reading skills (n = 17), and adults demonstrating low reading proficiency (n = 18) repeated or read aloud nonwords varying in orthographic transparency. Analyses of implicit linguistic processing (segmental accuracy and speech movement stability) were conducted. The accuracy and articulatory stability of productions of the nonwords were assessed before and after repetition or reading. Segmental accuracy results indicate that all 3 groups demonstrated greater learning when they were able to read, rather than just hear, the nonwords. Speech movement results indicate that, for adults with poor reading skills, exposure to the nonwords in a transparent spelling reduces the articulatory variability of speech production. Reading skill was correlated with speech movement stability in the groups of adults. In children and adults, orthography interacts with speech production; all participants integrate orthography into their lexical representations. Adults with poor reading skills do not use the same reading or speaking strategies as children with typical reading skills.

Reading Skill and Exposure to Orthography Influence Speech Production.

Orthographic experience during the acquisition of novel words may influence production processing in proficient readers. Previous work indicates interactivity among lexical, phonological, and articulatory processing; we hypothesized that experience with orthography can also influence phonological processing. Phonetic accuracy and articulatory stability were measured as adult, proficient readers repeated and read aloud nonwords, presented in auditory or written modalities and with variations in orthographic neighborhood density. Accuracy increased when participants had read the nonwords earlier in the session, but not when they had only heard them. Articulatory stability increased with practice, regardless of whether nonwords were read or heard. Word attack skills, but not reading comprehension, predicted articulatory stability. Findings indicate that kinematic and phonetic accuracy analyses provide insight into how orthography influences implicit language processing.

Assessing the Relationship Between Prosody and Reading Outcomes in Children Using the PEPS-C

This study investigated the relationship between both receptive and expressive prosody and each of three reading outcomes: accuracy of reading aloud words, accuracy of reading aloud nonwords, and comprehension. Participants were 63 children aged 7 to 12 years. To assess prosody, we used the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech Communication (PEPS-C; Peppé & McCann, 2003). Results revealed that certain subtests of the PEPS-C predicted a substantial proportion of variance across reading outcomes, even after age and segmental phonological awareness have been considered. In fact, our findings suggest that the PEPS-C compares favourably with a well-established test of segmental phonological awareness, the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999), in terms of its power to predict variability in children’s reading.

Visual word learning in adults with dyslexia.

We investigated word learning in university and college students with a diagnosis of dyslexia and in typically-reading controls. Participants read aloud short (4-letter) and longer (7-letter) nonwords as quickly as possible. The nonwords were repeated across 10 blocks, using a different random order in each block. Participants returned 7 days later and repeated the experiment. Accuracy was high in both groups. The dyslexics were substantially slower than the controls at reading the nonwords throughout the experiment. They also showed a larger length effect, indicating less effective decoding skills. Learning was demonstrated by faster reading of the nonwords across repeated presentations and by a reduction in the difference in reading speeds between shorter and longer nonwords. The dyslexics required more presentations of the nonwords before the length effect became non-significant, only showing convergence in reaction times between shorter and longer items in the second testing session where controls achieved convergence part-way through the first session. Participants also completed a psychological test battery assessing reading and spelling, vocabulary, phonological awareness, working memory, nonverbal ability and motor speed. The dyslexics performed at a similar level to the controls on nonverbal ability but significantly less well on all the other measures. Regression analyses found that decoding ability, measured as the speed of reading aloud nonwords when they were presented for the first time, was predicted by a composite of word reading and spelling scores (“literacy”). Word learning was assessed in terms of the improvement in naming speeds over 10 blocks of training. Learning was predicted by vocabulary and working memory scores, but not by literacy, phonological awareness, nonverbal ability or motor speed. The results show that young dyslexic adults have problems both in pronouncing novel words and in learning new written words.

Reading Aloud

A central feature of many formal accounts of reading aloud, and of Coltheart and colleagues dual-route cascaded model in particular, is that activation across various modules is cascaded. Evidence is reviewed that this assumption is problematic in a particular context, along with a solution that involves thresholding the output of the letter level to the nonlexical routine. Consideration of the known effects of repetition leads to the prediction of a three-way interaction between stimulus quality, repetition, and lexicality in which repetition and stimulus quality interact when reading aloud exception words, but produce additive effects when reading aloud nonwords. The result of such an experiment confirms this prediction, and appears consistent with the localized dual-route model. Implications for other accounts are briefly noted.

Word associations in deep dyslexia

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder resulting in the production of semantic errors during oral reading and an inability to read aloud nonwords. Several researchers have postulated that patients with deep dyslexia have both phonological and semantic access impairments but the data supporting these claims are not convincing. In fact, the hallmark feature of deep dyslexia—the semantic errors—strongly implies that these patients can access semantic information from printed words. We test the integrity of the semantic system in two such patients through auditory and visual word association tasks. The data support the notion that semantics remains intact and that the disorder and associated errors arise through a selection impairment related to failure of inhibitory connections in the phonological lexicon.

Stimulus-Specific Neglect in a Deep Dyslexic Patient

We report a patient (B.V.) who appears to suffer from two dyslexic disorders. First, B.V. showed a severe impairment in reading aloud nonwords (e.g., reading TREST as TREE), in addition to making several semantic errors when reading aloud words (e.g., reading ILL as SICK) and in picture naming (e.g., responding KNIFE to a picture of a FORK). These results suggest that B.V. suffers from deep dyslexia. Second, B.V. showed an impairment in reading the final letters of both words and nonwords (e.g., reading SHOWN as SHORT and reading PROGE as PROOF). Thus, it appears that B.V. also suffers from neglect dyslexia. We discuss how these two forms of dyslexia could be interacting to account for B.V.'s pattern of errors in reading aloud words and nonwords and in picture naming.

Phonological processes in reading: new evidence from acquired dyslexia

This paper investigates the reading performance of two patients with acquired dyslexia. The first patient read aloud all classes of word (85–95 per cent correct), including affixed words, but failed to read aloud non-words. In addition, semantic judgements about written words were shown to be significantly impaired, relative to the ability to read the words aloud. These dissociations support the view that two independent lexical routes are available for reading aloud familiar words, a semantic route and a lexical phonological route. While unable to read aloud non-words, this patient retained the ability to segment orthographic and phonological stimuli. The reading of non-lexical material, therefore, does not appear to be mediated by lexical analogy procedures. Instead, it is suggested that a non-lexical phonological route exists that is clearly independent of lexical phonological procedures. This patient could process isolated written suffixes orthographically, but could only access complete phonological word forms. Suffixed words (but not isolated suffixes) appear to be represented in the phonological word store. The second patient read aloud non-words, but could not give phonetic sounds appropriate to single letters. This dissociation suggests that the reading aloud of non-words is not reliant upon grapheme-phoneme rules.

Children's and adults' reading of nonwords: effects of regularity and consistency.

The procedures used by novice readers to assemble pronunciations for nonwords were investigated. Children in Grades 1-3 read aloud consonant-vowel-consonant and longer monosyllabic nonwords. By the end of Grade 1, children displayed a good grasp of grapheme-phoneme (G-P) correspondences (e.g., ai, ow). Grade 2 and 3 readers increasingly used larger orthographic correspondences termed rimes (e.g., -ook, -ild). However, G-P correspondences determined most responses. Adults likewise used G-P rules when reading aloud nonwords and were more accurate at applying the rules. The strong reliance of Grade 1 and 2 readers on G-P rules was also demonstrated by their superior oral reading of regular words along with a tendency to regularize exception words (e.g., reading bull to rhyme with dull).

Phonological dyslexia, lexical analogy, and functional models of oral reading: A critique of Bradley and Thomson

We discuss some of the interesting features of the investigation of a phonological dyslexic patient's ability to read aloud nonwords embedded in words reported by Bradley and Thomson (1984, Brain and Language, 22, 292–302). We highlight some problems of their interpretation, tentatively suggest an alternative explanation in terms of lexical analogy, and conclude by suggesting some prescriptive conditions for the legitimacy of extending models of normal functioning to account for cognitive neuropsychological data.