Why is nonword reading so variable in adult skilled readers?
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Coltheart M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5971095 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Resilient readers are characterized by impaired phonological processing despite skilled text comprehension. We investigated orthographic and semantic processing in resilient readers to examine mechanisms of compensation for poor phonological decoding. Performance on phonological (phoneme deletion, pseudoword reading), orthographic (orthographic choice, orthographic analogy), and semantic (semantic priming, homograph resolution) tasks was compared between resilient, poor and proficient readers. Asymmetry of the planum temporale was investigated in order to determine whether atypical readers showed unusual morphology in this language-relevant region. Resilient readers showed deficits on phonological tasks similar to those shown by poor readers. We obtained no evidence that resilient readers compensate via superior orthographic processing, as they showed neither exceptional orthographic skill nor increased reliance on orthography to guide pronunciation. Resilient readers benefited more than poor or proficient readers from semantic relationships between words and experienced greater difficulty when such relationships were not present. We suggest, therefore, that resilient readers compensate for poor phonological decoding via greater reliance on word meaning relationships. The reading groups did not differ in mean asymmetry of the planum temporale. However, resilient readers showed greater variability in planar asymmetry than proficient readers. Poor readers also showed a trend towards greater variability in planar asymmetry, with more poor readers than proficient readers showing extreme asymmetry. Such increased variability suggests that university students with less reading skill display less well regulated brain anatomy than proficient readers.
| S-EPMC4617338 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Reading typically involves phonological mediation, especially for transparent orthographies with a regular letter to sound correspondence. In this study we ask whether phonological coding is a necessary part of the reading process by examining prelingually deaf individuals who are skilled readers of Spanish. We conducted two EEG experiments exploiting the pseudohomophone effect, in which nonwords that sound like words elicit phonological encoding during reading. The first, a semantic categorization task with masked priming, resulted in modulation of the N250 by pseudohomophone primes in hearing but not in deaf readers. The second, a lexical decision task, confirmed the pattern: hearing readers had increased errors and an attenuated N400 response for pseudohomophones compared to control pseudowords, whereas deaf readers did not treat pseudohomophones any differently from pseudowords, either behaviourally or in the ERP response. These results offer converging evidence that skilled deaf readers do not rely on phonological coding during visual word recognition. Furthermore, the finding demonstrates that reading can take place in the absence of phonological activation, and we speculate about the alternative mechanisms that allow these deaf individuals to read competently.
| S-EPMC7933439 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Knowledge about how characters are written has been argued to play a particularly important role in how children learn to read Chinese. In the current study, we investigate the role that knowledge about writing characters plays in visual word processing in skilled adult readers. While there is clear neuropsychological evidence against the strong version of the hypothesis that reading depends on writing in Chinese even once literacy is acquired, it is still possible that writing could have a modulatory influence on how visually presented Chinese characters are processed in literate readers. The present study addressed this hypothesis using a visual same/different judgment task on pairs of characters that vary in how similar the 2 characters are visually and how similar they are in terms of motor plan, using 24 expert readers and writers of Chinese and 24 naïve participants with no prior experience with written Chinese as subjects. The results of linear mixed-effects modeling indicate that the speed of same/different judgments is influenced by visual similarity, but not by how similar they are written, even in the group of skilled readers. These results suggest that knowledge of how Chinese characters are written does not influence visual character processing in skilled readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
| S-EPMC6330147 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous studies have indicated that the relationship between magnocellular-dorsal (M-D) function and reading-related skills may vary with reading development in readers of alphabetic languages. Since this relationship could be affected by the orthographic depth of writing systems, the present study explored the relationship between M-D function and reading-related skills in Chinese, a writing system with a deeper orthography than alphabetic languages. Thirty-seven primary school students and fifty-one undergraduate students participated. Orthographic and phonological awareness tests were adopted as reading-related skill measurements. A steady-pedestal paradigm was used to assess the low-spatial-frequency contrast thresholds of M-D function. Results showed that M-D function was only correlated with orthographic awareness for adults, revealing an enhancement with reading development; while being related to phonological awareness only for children revealing a developmental decrement. It suggested that the mechanism responsible for the relationship between M-D activity and reading-related skills was affected by the characteristics of literacy development in Chinese.
| S-EPMC5509136 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In delineating the amount of orthographic information that can be processed in parallel during a single fixation, the visual attention (VA) span acts as a key component of the reading system. Previous studies focused on the contribution of VA span to normal and pathological reading in monolingual and bilingual children from different European languages, without direct cross-language comparison. In the current paper, we explored modulations of VA span abilities in three languages -French, Spanish, and Arabic- that differ in transparency, reading direction and writing systems. The participants were skilled adult readers who were native speakers of French, Spanish or Arabic. They were administered tasks of global and partial letter report, single letter identification and text reading. Their VA span abilities were assessed using tasks that require the processing of briefly presented five consonant strings (e.g., R S H F T). All five consonants had to be reported in global report but a single cued letter in partial report. Results showed that VA span was reduced in Arabic readers as compared to French or Spanish readers who otherwise show a similar high performance in the two report tasks. The analysis of VA span response patterns in global report showed a left-right asymmetry in all three languages. A leftward letter advantage was found in French and Spanish but a rightward advantage in Arabic. The response patterns were symmetric in partial report, regardless of the language. Last, a significant relationship was found between VA span abilities and reading speed but only for French. The overall findings suggest that the size of VA span, the shape of VA span response patterns and the VA Span-reading relationship are modulated by language-specific features.
| S-EPMC4779959 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Many deaf individuals do not develop the high-level reading skills that will allow them to fully take part into society. To attempt to explain this widespread difficulty in the deaf population, much research has honed in on the use of phonological codes during reading. The hypothesis that the use of phonological codes is associated with good reading skills in deaf readers, though not well supported, still lingers in the literature. We investigated skilled and less-skilled adult deaf readers' processing of orthographic and phonological codes in parafoveal vision during reading by monitoring their eye movements and using the boundary paradigm. Orthographic preview benefits were found in early measures of reading for skilled hearing, skilled deaf, and less-skilled deaf readers, but only skilled hearing readers processed phonological codes in parafoveal vision. Crucially, skilled and less-skilled deaf readers showed a very similar pattern of preview benefits during reading. These results support the notion that reading difficulties in deaf adults are not linked to their failure to activate phonological codes during reading.
| S-EPMC3808502 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In this study the print awareness of 25 unschooled adult illiterates in the Netherlands was compared with that of 24 pre-reading children and of 23 low-educated literate adults with approximately four years of primary schooling. The illiterates were interviewed about their experiences with writing and all participants completed six assessments of print awareness in the language they preferred (first or second language). The outcomes revealed that the three groups did not differ in distinguishing conventional written signs from other visual signs, that both groups of non-readers differed significantly from low educated readers but not from each other in knowledge of logos, inscriptions and knowledge of the written register, while the adult illiterates performed significantly better than the children on grapheme knowledge. Adult illiterates in literate societies seem to be well informed about the uses and functions of written language and about what writing looks like, but like young children they are not good at reading environmental print out of context and in explaining what exactly is represented in writing. The variation in reactions within the group of illiterate adults could be related to existing models of emergent literacy. Implications for adult literacy education are discussed.
| S-EPMC2744801 | biostudies-other
Project description:The epigenetic machinery deputed to control histone post-translational modifications is frequently dysregulated in cancer cells. With epigenetics being naturally reversible, it represents a good target for therapies directed to restore normal gene expression. Since the discovery of Bromodomain and Extra Terminal (BET) inhibitors, a great effort has been spent investigating the effects of chromatin readers' inhibition, specifically the class of proteins assigned to bind acetylated and methylated residues. So far, focused studies have been produced on epigenetic regulation, dissecting a specific class of epigenetic-related proteins or investigating epigenetic therapy in a specific tumor type. In this review, recent steps toward drug discovery on the different classes of chromatin readers have been outlined, highlighting the pros and cons of current therapeutic approaches.
| S-EPMC6356452 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Are there multiple ways to be a skilled reader? To address this longstanding, unresolved question, we hypothesized that individual variability in using semantic information in reading aloud would be associated with neuroanatomical variation in pathways linking semantics and phonology. Left-hemisphere regions of interest for diffusion tensor imaging analysis were defined based on fMRI results, including two regions linked with semantic processing - angular gyrus (AG) and inferior temporal sulcus (ITS) - and two linked with phonological processing - posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). Effects of imageability (a semantic measure) on response times varied widely among individuals and covaried with the volume of pathways through the ITS and pMTG, and through AG and pSTG, partially overlapping the inferior longitudinal fasciculus and the posterior branch of the arcuate fasciculus. These results suggest strategy differences among skilled readers associated with structural variation in the neural reading network.
| S-EPMC4036070 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Reading research uses different tasks to investigate different levels of the reading process, such as word recognition, syntactic parsing, or semantic integration. It seems to be tacitly assumed that the underlying cognitive process that constitute reading are stable across those tasks. However, nothing is known about what happens when readers switch from one reading task to another. The stability assumptions of the reading process suggest that the cognitive system resolves this switching between two tasks quickly. Here, we present an alternative language-game hypothesis (LGH) of reading that begins by treating reading as a softly-assembled process and that assumes, instead of stability, context-sensitive flexibility of the reading process. LGH predicts that switching between two reading tasks leads to longer lasting phase-transition like patterns in the reading process. Using the nonlinear-dynamical tool of recurrence quantification analysis, we test these predictions by examining series of individual word reading times in self-paced reading tasks where native (L1) and second language readers (L2) transition between random word and ordered text reading tasks. We find consistent evidence for phase-transitions in the reading times when readers switch from ordered text to random-word reading, but we find mixed evidence when readers transition from random-word to ordered-text reading. In the latter case, L2 readers show moderately stronger signs for phase-transitions compared to L1 readers, suggesting that familiarity with a language influences whether and how such transitions occur. The results provide evidence for LGH and suggest that the cognitive processes underlying reading are not fully stable across tasks but exhibit soft-assembly in the interaction between task and reader characteristics.
| S-EPMC6363172 | biostudies-literature