Shallow Orthography Research Articles

Implicit Learning of Written Regularities and Its Relation to Literacy Acquisition in a Shallow Orthography

Some research on literacy acquisition suggests that implicit learning processes may be related to reading and writing proficiency in English, which is a deep orthography. However, little research has been done to determine if the same is true in shallow orthographies. Here, we investigated whether the implicit learning ability of third grade Spanish speaking children was related to their reading and writing abilities. Twenty eight children viewed pseudowords which all adhered to untaught graphotactic rules and were later assessed to determine their implicit learning of these rules. The children's reading and writing abilities were also assessed using standardized tests. No correlations were found between the participants' level of implicit learning and their performance on reading tasks or on a pseudoword writing task, suggesting that implicit learning is not strongly related to the acquisition of phonological regularities in a shallow orthography. A correlation was found between recognition of previously seen exemplars and the ability to spell inconsistent words which require word specific knowledge to resolve the spelling inconsistencies. This result suggests that implicit learning mechanisms may play a role in the acquisition of lexical knowledge and thus, in writing proficiency.

CDP++.Italian: modelling sublexical and supralexical inconsistency in a shallow orthography.

Most models of reading aloud have been constructed to explain data in relatively complex orthographies like English and French. Here, we created an Italian version of the Connectionist Dual Process Model of Reading Aloud (CDP++) to examine the extent to which the model could predict data in a language which has relatively simple orthography-phonology relationships but is relatively complex at a suprasegmental (word stress) level. We show that the model exhibits good quantitative performance and accounts for key phenomena observed in naming studies, including some apparently contradictory findings. These effects include stress regularity and stress consistency, both of which have been especially important in studies of word recognition and reading aloud in Italian. Overall, the results of the model compare favourably to an alternative connectionist model that can learn non-linear spelling-to-sound mappings. This suggests that CDP++ is currently the leading computational model of reading aloud in Italian, and that its simple linear learning mechanism adequately captures the statistical regularities of the spelling-to-sound mapping both at the segmental and supra-segmental levels.

Word and pseudoword superiority effects in a shallow orthography language: the role of hemispheric lateralization.

The word superiority effect (WSE) has made it possible to demonstrate the automatic activation of lexical-orthographic entries in reading. The observation of this effect is important since it led to experimental support of the main cognitive reading models. These models were mostly developed on English data, hence the verification in different orthography systems is relevant. The present study tested WSE in Italian, a language in which this effect was predicted to be less constant given the highly consistent correspondence between orthography and phonology. Moreover, the presentation of the items in a lateralized visual field condition allowed testing of assumptions about the roles of the right and left hemispheres in written word recognition and, in particular, on the hemispheric lateralization of lexical processing. Two experiments were conducted with undergraduate students who had to recognize a target letter within a word, pseudoword, or nonword. In Experiment 1, prime and probe letters were in the same letter case, while in Experiment 2 they were in different letter cases. Error rates and reaction times were analyzed with mixed models. The results showed a superiority of pseudowords (pseudoword superiority effect; PSE) over illegal strings with no evidence of a clear superiority of words over pseudowords for both left and right visual field presentations. This suggests that in Italian, the sub-lexical route could play a major role in reading and that this route relies on a visual-perceptual orthographic coding concerning familiarity of letter combinations, which is also available to the right hemisphere.

Inflectional morphological awareness and word reading and reading comprehension in Greek

ABSTRACTThe study explored the contribution of two aspects of inflectional morphological awareness, verb inflection and noun–adjective inflection, to word reading and reading comprehension in the Greek language, which is an orthographically transparent language. Participants (120 first graders, 123 second graders, 126 third graders) were given two oral language experimental tasks of inflectional morphological awareness. Furthermore, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, decoding, and reading comprehension were evaluated. It was revealed that noun–adjective inflectional morphology contributed significantly to decoding only in first grade, while verb inflectional morphology had a significant contribution to reading comprehension in third grade. It is interesting that inflectional morphological awareness did not predict reading skills for second graders. Phonological awareness was a firm predictor of word reading in all grades and made a unique contribution in Grades 2 and 3. Finally, in all grades, receptive vocabulary was a steady predictor of reading comprehension, whereas expressive vocabulary predicted only first-grade reading comprehension. It is suggested that inflectional morphological awareness may be an important predictor of early reading in a language with a shallow orthography and a rich morphology.

The relative contributions of vocabulary, decoding, and phonemic awareness to word reading in English versus German

Beginning readers in shallow orthographies acquire word reading skills more quickly than in deep orthographies like English. In addition to extending this evidence base by comparing reading acquisition in English with the more transparent German, we conducted a longitudinal study and investigated whether different early reading skills made different contributions to word reading as a function of orthography. Children (n = 133) were recruited from the first year of primary school in New Zealand (age 5;8) and Germany (age 7;2) and from kindergartens in Germany (age 5;0) to provide both age- and schooling-matched samples. Parallel measures of phonemic awareness, vocabulary, decoding skill, and word reading (accuracy) were administered at two time points, 1 year apart. An advantage for orthography and school attendance existed for reading development. Vocabulary made a greater contribution to word reading in English than in German as did decoding skill. Findings underscore the relative importance of vocabulary and decoding skills for early reading in English.

Language context modulates reading route: an electrical neuroimaging study

Introduction: The orthographic depth hypothesis (Katz and Feldman, 1983) posits that different reading routes are engaged depending on the type of grapheme/phoneme correspondence of the language being read. Shallow orthographies with consistent grapheme/phoneme correspondences favor encoding via non-lexical pathways, where each grapheme is sequentially mapped to its corresponding phoneme. In contrast, deep orthographies with inconsistent grapheme/phoneme correspondences favor lexical pathways, where phonemes are retrieved from specialized memory structures. This hypothesis, however, lacks compelling empirical support. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of orthographic depth on reading route selection using a within-subject design.Method: We presented the same pseudowords (PWs) to highly proficient bilinguals and manipulated the orthographic depth of PW reading by embedding them among two separated German or French language contexts, implicating respectively, shallow or deep orthography. High density electroencephalography was recorded during the task.Results: The topography of the ERPs to identical PWs differed 300–360 ms post-stimulus onset when the PWs were read in different orthographic depth context, indicating distinct brain networks engaged in reading during this time window. The brain sources underlying these topographic effects were located within left inferior frontal (German > French), parietal (French > German) and cingular areas (German > French).Conclusion: Reading in a shallow context favors non-lexical pathways, reflected in a stronger engagement of frontal phonological areas in the shallow versus the deep orthographic context. In contrast, reading PW in a deep orthographic context recruits less routine non-lexical pathways, reflected in a stronger engagement of visuo-attentional parietal areas in the deep versus shallow orthographic context. These collective results support a modulation of reading route by orthographic depth.

Effects of the psycholinguistic variables on the lexical decision task in Spanish: A study with 2,765 words

In order to explore the role of the main psycholinguistic variables on visual word recognition, several mega-studies have been conducted in English in recent years. Nevertheless, because the effects of these variables depend on the regularity of the orthographic system, studies must also be done in other languages with different characteristics. The goal of this work was to conduct a lexical decision study in Spanish, a language with a shallow orthography and a high number of words. The influence of psycholinguistic variables on latencies corresponding to 2,765 words was assessed by means of linear mixed-effects modeling. The results show that some variables, such as frequency or age of acquisition, have significant effects on reaction times regardless of the type of words used. Other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or imageability, were significant only in specific groups of words. Our results highlight the importance of taking into account the peculiarities of each spelling system in the development of reading models.

Orthographic Depth Modulates Reading Route Selection: An Electrical Neuroimaging Study

Introduction The orthographic Depth Hypothesis (Katz and Feldman, 1983) posits that different reading routes are engaged depending on the expertise of the reader but also on the type of grapheme/phoneme correspondence of the language being read. Shallow orthographies (e.g. German and Italian) with consistent grapheme to phoneme correspondences favor encoding via non-lexical pathways, where each phoneme is sequentially mapped to its corresponding grapheme. In contrast, deep orthographies (e.g. French and English), with inconsistent grapheme to phoneme correspondences favor lexical pathways, where phonemes are retrieved from memory structures. Only few studies investigated the impact of orthographic depth on brain response while reading. Moreover, because they used between subject or cross-language designs, the interpretability of previous studies on the effect of orthographic depth is limited. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of orthographic depth on reading route selection using an experimental design enabling isolating the effect of orthographic depth. Method We presented the same pseudowords (PWs) to highly proficient bilinguals and manipulated the orthographic depth of PW reading by embedding them among two separated language contexts (German and French), implicating either shallow or deep orthography. High density 128-channel electroencephalography was recorded during the task. Results The topographies of the event-related potential were different between PWs read in deep orthographic context and PWs read in shallow orthographic context at 300-360ms after stimulus onset, indicating distinct brain networks engaged in reading during this time window. The brain source underlying these topographic effects were located within left inferior frontal, left parietal and left cingular areas. Conclusion We propose that in deep orthographic context, reading PWs cannot rely on the routine lexical pathways and thus switching to the non-lexical route is necessary. In controast, reading in a shallow orthographic context favors non-lexical route processing which fits PW reading. The topographic modulation might thus reflect the recruitment of lexical pathways in the deep but not in the shallow context. Analysis of electrical source estimation over the period of topographic modulation supports this hypothesis by showing that inferior frontal areas, a region shown to subserve phonological processing, is differentially engaged between the deep vs shallow conditions. In addition, a difference in the activity of parietal-cingular areas suggests a modulation of attentional demands related to route selection processes. Non-lexical route may be less automatized than lexical route processing. These collective results support a modulation of reading route selection by orthographic depth.

Effect of lexical proficiency on reading strategies used for shallow and deep orthographies

The aim of the present study was to explore how different levels of proficiency in deep orthography (DO) influence the reading strategies used for sentences containing both shallow orthographies and DO, and to examine the neural correlates involved. High-proficiency participants, who depend on rapid and direct semantic retrieval by the lexical route, activated the anterior cingulate cortex, middle frontal, and fusiform gyri. Low-proficiency participants, who rely on the sublexical route, activated inferior parietal lobule and inferior frontal gyrus. These findings suggest that level of proficiency in DO modulates the selection of specific reading strategies, and that the neural pathways underlying these strategies are separately laid out in the cortical areas.

Differences in the reading of shallow and deep orthography: developmental evidence from Hebrew and Turkish readers

The present study investigates differences in the word‐reading process between individuals reading in a deep (unpointed Hebrew) and a shallow orthography (Turkish). The participants were 120 students evenly and randomly recruited from three levels of education (primary = 3rd–4th graders; middle = 6th–7th graders; high = 9th–10th graders). The students were tested with a computerised paradigm that assessed their efficiency in determining the identicalness of real word (RW) pairs and nonsense word (NW) pairs under perceptual and conceptual conditions. Based on a strong orthographic depth hypothesis, Turkish readers were hypothesised to manifest superior word‐processing skills in comparison to Hebrew readers, both for RWs and NWs. Evidence obtained from the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative performance of the participants failed to support this prediction. Findings are discussed with reference to a single‐route grain‐size‐based word‐reading model and a modified dual‐route word‐reading model.

Reading difficulties in Albanian

Albanian is an Indo-European language with a shallow orthography, in which there is an absolute correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. We aimed to know reading strategies used by Albanian disabled children during word and pseudoword reading. A pool of 114 Kosovar reading disabled children matched with 150 normal readers aged 6 to 11 years old were tested. They had to read 120 stimuli varied in lexicality, frequency, and length. The results in terms of reading accuracy as well as in reading times show that both groups were affected by lexicality and length effects. In both groups, length and lexicality effects were significantly modulated by school year being greater in early grades and later diminish in length and just the opposite in lexicality. However, the reading difficulties group was less accurate and slower than the control group across all school grades. Analyses of the error patterns showed that phonological errors, when the letter replacement leading to new nonwords, are the most common error type in both groups, although as grade rises, visual errors and lexicalizations increased more in the control group than the reading difficulties group. These findings suggest that Albanian normal children use both routes (lexical and sublexical) from the beginning of reading despite of the complete regularity of Albanian, while children with reading difficulties start using sublexical reading and the lexical reading takes more time to acquire, but finally both routes are functional.

Does the Reading of Different Orthographies Produce Distinct Brain Activity Patterns? An ERP Study

Orthographies vary in the degree of transparency of spelling-sound correspondence. These range from shallow orthographies with transparent grapheme-phoneme relations, to deep orthographies, in which these relations are opaque. Only a few studies have examined whether orthographic depth is reflected in brain activity. In these studies a between-language design was applied, making it difficult to isolate the aspect of orthographic depth. In the present work this question was examined using a within-subject-and-language investigation. The participants were speakers of Hebrew, as they are skilled in reading two forms of script transcribing the same oral language. One form is the shallow pointed script (with diacritics), and the other is the deep unpointed script (without diacritics). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while skilled readers carried out a lexical decision task in the two forms of script. A visual non-orthographic task controlled for the visual difference between the scripts (resulting from the addition of diacritics to the pointed script only). At an early visual-perceptual stage of processing (∼165 ms after target onset), the pointed script evoked larger amplitudes with longer latencies than the unpointed script at occipital-temporal sites. However, these effects were not restricted to orthographic processing, and may therefore have reflected, at least in part, the visual load imposed by the diacritics. Nevertheless, the results implied that distinct orthographic processing may have also contributed to these effects. At later stages (∼340 ms after target onset) the unpointed script elicited larger amplitudes than the pointed one with earlier latencies. As this latency has been linked to orthographic-linguistic processing and to the classification of stimuli, it is suggested that these differences are associated with distinct lexical processing of a shallow and a deep orthography.

The ABC of Reading. Perspectives on the alphabetic principle.

An alphabetic writing system is a system in which words consist of individual letters that correspond to spoken-language units at a similar level of analysis. The systematic relationships between units of these two systems are collectively referred to as the Alphabetic Principle. This principle has attained the status of one of the most basic and universal assumptions in current research on reading and writing. But although it is thus extensively used, there have been few attempts to determine what restrictions may apply to its appropriate use as a scientific term. A primary aim of the present article is to contribute to the empirical foundation of reading research through a clarification of the scientific status of the Alphabetic Principle. The article analyses a report from the United States National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000), chosen as an example of how the Alphabetic Principle is used in current reading research, and addresses the Alphabetic Principle qua principle in order to clarify its scientific status. We argue that the term “principle” creates the incorrect impression that the phenomenon is precisely defined and universally valid. As we see it, the Alphabetic Principle rather refers to regularities or patterns that vary between languages. Phonics, the reading-instruction approach normally defined on the basis of the Alphabetic Principle, is of greatest value for languages with shallow orthographies—but even there, we should be aware that no simple and unambiguous association exists between grapheme and phoneme.

Differences in Word Processing Skills of Deaf and Hearing Individuals Reading in Different Orthographies

The study investigated differences in the word processing skills of prelingually deaf and hearing participants reading in five orthographies (Hebrew, Arabic, English, German and Turkish). We tested 256 readers (132 deaf and 124 hearing) from the mid level of education (sixth and seventh grades) using two computerized paradigms that assessed the perceptual and conceptual processing of word pairs. Based on the Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (ODH), we expected those reading in shallow orthographies to process the written words faster and more accurately than those reading in deep orthographies. Moreover, we anticipated a deficit in the word processing skills of deaf readers as compared to their hearing peers, regardless of orthography. Findings suggested that, in orthographies with demanding visuo-perceptual properties, prelingually deaf readers are at risk of developing processing deficits even at the word (lexical) level of text processing. However, such deficits do not seem to be directly related to hearing status or the shallowness of the orthography, but rather seem to reflect the joint contribution of augmented visuo-perceptual processing demands in visually complex orthographies and drastically impoverished reading experience that hampers the optimization of perceptual processes required to efficiently deal with such complexity.

Does Processing a Shallow and a Deep Orthography Produce Different Brain Activity Patterns? An ERP Study Conducted in Hebrew

Orthographies range from shallow orthographies with transparent grapheme-phoneme relations, to deep orthographies, in which these relations are opaque. Two forms of script transcribe the Hebrew language: the shallow pointed script (with diacritics) and the deep unpointed script (without diacritics). This study was set out to examine whether the reading of these scripts evokes distinct brain activity. Preliminary results indicate distinct Event-related-potentials (ERPs). As an equivalent finding was absent when ERPs of non-orthographic stimuli with and without meaningless diacritics were compared, the results imply that print-specific aspects of processing account for the distinct activity elicited by the pointed and unpointed scripts.

How Many Functional Brains in Developmental Dyslexia? When the History of Language Delay Makes the Difference

Clinical manifestations of developmental dyslexia (DD) are greatly variable, suggesting complex underlying mechanisms. It was recently advanced that the characteristics of DD in Italian, a language with shallow orthography, are influenced by a positive history for language delay. We explored this hypothesis by studying in Italian individuals with DD (i) the brain representation of phonological processing with functional magnetic resonance imaging and (ii) the correlation between the patterns of activation and the presence/absence of previous language delay. Thirteen individuals with DD and 13 controls participated in the functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment consisting of a rhyme-generation task. Individuals with DD showed a reduced activation of phonological processing areas of the left hemisphere, such as the middle frontal gyrus, the precuneus, and the inferior parietal lobule, and in particular the superior temporal gyrus. Furthermore, patients with a history of language delay had reduced activation in the left inferior and medial frontal gyrus, that was associated with worse reading and phonological accuracy than patients with normal language development. Neurofunctional profiles of Italian individuals with DD are correlated to the history of language delay, suggesting that the relatively better behavioral profiles observed in individuals without a history of language delay are associated with a major activation of frontal networks normally involved in phonological working memory.

Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: the case of Italian language

This study analyzed the spelling skills of Italian children as a function of school experience. We examined the writing performances of 465 first- to eighth-grade normal readers on a spelling test that included regular words, context-sensitive regular words, words with ambiguous transcription, and regular pseudowords. Based on the dual-route model (DRM), the regularity and orthographic complexity effects were considered to probe sublexical processing while the lexicality effect was taken to mark lexical processing. The analysis of spelling performances indicated that, among Italian children, both lexical and sublexical procedures are available since the first year of schooling. However, the two procedures showed different developmental trends. The DRM appears as a useful theoretical framework to describe the development of spelling in a relatively regular language such as Italian.

THE INHIBITORY EFFECT OF PHONOLOGICAL SYLLABLES, RATHER THAN ORTHOGRAPHIC SYLLABLES, AS EVIDENCED IN KOREAN LEXICAL DECISION TASKS

Previous studies on shallow orthographies and clear syllable boundaries of languages—such as Spanish, German, and French—report an inhibitory effect in lexical decision tasks when targets have more densely frequent syllable neighborhoods (MFSNs). However, these results do not indicate whether the inhibitory effect derives from orthographic syllable representations or phonological syllable representations, because the target words in those studies were mixed in terms of orthographic and phonological representations. The present study investigated whether an inhibitory effect due to lexical competitors derives from phonological or orthographic syllables, using two lexical decision tasks with Korean bisyllable words. In Experiment 1, when a target had MFSNs that controlled for orthographically related sublexical variables (e.g., bigram frequency, the density of orthographic neighborhoods, and the density of more frequent orthographic syllable neighborhoods), the facilitative effect occurred. In Experiment 2, a typical inhibitory effect in a lexical decision task was elicited by a dense MFSN in a phonologically defined syllable, while a dense MFSN in an orthographically defined syllable did not create the inhibitory effect. The results suggest that an inhibitory effect due to lexical competition might not be derived from orthographic syllables, but from phonological syllables.

Subtypes of reading disability in a shallow orthography: a double dissociation between accuracy-disabled and rate-disabled readers of Hebrew

Whereas most English language sub-typing schemes for dyslexia (e.g., Castles & Coltheart, 1993) have focused on reading accuracy for words varying in regularity, such an approach may have limited utility for reading disability sub-typing beyond English in which fluency rather than accuracy is the key discriminator of developmental and individual differences in reading ability. The present study investigated the viability of an accuracy/fluency-based typology in a regular orthography, pointed Hebrew. We sought evidence of true or "hard" accuracy/rate subtypes in the strict (double dissociation) sense of selective impairment on only one dimension in the presence of normal levels of performance on the other dimension. In a nationally representative sample of fourth graders, we were able to identify a specific accuracy-disabled sub-group as well as an equally specific rate-disabled subgroup. Validating this subdivision, we show that the nature of reading performance in these subgroups and their converging cognitive/linguistic profiles are unique and distinctive on variables other than the measures used to define them. While the rate-specific disability appeared to reflect a general deficit in speed of processing affecting reading rate, and rapid automatized naming of print-related material, the accuracy-only disability subgroup displayed selective deficits in phonological awareness and morphological knowledge. Biosocial, demographic, and instructional factors, furthermore, did not explain the sub-group differences. It appears that both these subtypes are equally prevalent each counting close to 10% of the population.

Spelling impairments in Italian dyslexic children: Phenomenological changes in primary school

IntroductionAlthough spelling difficulties are constantly associated with developmental dyslexia, they have been largely neglected by the majority of studies in this area. This study analyzes spelling impairments in developmental dyslexia across school grades in Italian, a language with high grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence. MethodsThe performances of 33 Italian dyslexic children attending Grades 3 and 5 were compared with those of age-matched control participants. Writing abilities were investigated through a spelling test that included regular words with one-sound-to-one-letter correspondence, regular words requiring the application of context-sensitive conversion rules, words with unpredictable transcription and nonwords with one-sound-to-one-letter correspondence. ResultsBoth accuracy and error analyses indicate that the spelling impairment assumes different characteristics at different grades: Grade 3 children showed an undifferentiated spelling deficit (involving regular words, regular nonwords and words with unpredictable spelling), whereas the fifth graders were prevalently impaired in writing words with unpredictable transcription. The error analysis confirms these results, with third graders producing a high rate of all types of errors (i.e., phonologically plausible, simple and context-sensitive conversion errors), whereas most errors committed by fifth graders were phonologically plausible. ConclusionsResults are coherent with the hypothesis that dyslexic children learning a shallow orthography suffer from delayed acquisition and some fragility of the sub-word level routine, together with a severe and long-lasting deficit of orthographic lexical acquisition.