Cross-linguistic Studies of Visual Word Recognition

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Cross-linguistic Studies of Visual Word
Recognition

• Greg Simpson
• Illinois State University

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Word Recognition and Orthographies

• The role of cross-linguistic studies in
  psychology
• Universals vs language-specific phenomena
• Confusing the subject matter with the language
• Confusing the subject matter with the subjects
• Languages chosen for certain characteristics

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Word Recognition and Orthographies

• Ambiguous words (e.g., count)
• Number count
• Handsome count
• Context leads to activating one meaning, or
• Context selects among activated meanings

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(No Transcript)
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Sample of the meanings of Shi

• First tone
• Wet, poetry, teacher, model, example, troops,
  lion, hush, lose, break (promise), get lost,
  mishap, mistake, implement (v), bestow, grant,
  corpse, louse
• Second tone
• Solid, true, honest, fruit, knowledge, ten,
  assorted stone, pick up, time, season,
  opportunity, occasionally, eat, erode
• Third tone
• Drive, sail, excrement, arrow, swear, beginning,
  only then

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Sample of the meanings of Shi

• Fourth tone
• Room, market, city, persimmon, type, pattern,
  formula, try, examination, wipe, show, notify,
  look at, scholar, rely on, serve, lifetime, age,
  world, epoch, matter, business, trouble,
  accident, job, responsibility, swear, pledge, to
  die, power, momentum, situation, sign, gesture,
  to be correct, explain, be relieved of, set free,
  fit proper, comfortable, follow, family name,
  decorations, dress up, act a part

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Word Recognition and Orthographies

• Writing represents speech
• A unit of writing represents a unit of the speech
  stream
• Units of the speech stream
• Morpheme Logography (Chinese)
• Syllable Syllabary (Japanese)
• Phoneme Alphabet (Most of the rest)

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Orthographic Transparency

• Print-pronunciation relations
• Opaque (e.g., English)
• Lack of 11 relation of graphemes to phonemes
• great/giant
• sent/cent
• morpheme
• morpheme/shepherd
• Transparent (e.g., Spanish, Korean)
• Closer correspondence of graphemes to phonemes

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(No Transcript)
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Sejong the Great (1397-1450)

• The most rational of all writing systems
• Watanabe Suzuki (1981)
• If rulers were ever measured by anything besides
  military exploits, Sejong would surely be among
  the foremost to have appeared on the stage of
  history.
• DeFrancis (1989)
• An intelligent person can learn the system before
  the morning is over. Even the thick-headed can
  master it in ten days.
• Hangul scholar
  (ca. 1446)

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Korean Orthography

• The Hangul alphabet
• Transparent
• Letter shape
• Related phonemes/related letters
• Consonants and the vocal tract
• Syllable block printing

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Hangul Consonants
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Origin of Consonant Shape
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Hangul Vowels

• Variations on vertical or horizontal line
• Related vowels represented by similar letters
  (ah/yah, oh/yoh)

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Syllable-block Printing
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(No Transcript)
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Hangul and Hanza
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• Hangul and Hanza naming
• .8 Hanza/.2 Hangul
• .2 Hanza/.8 Hangul

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• Dual-route Model
• Phonological
• Lexical
• Neurological evidence
• Acquired dyslexia
• Word-reading evidence
• Regular and irregular words
• Nonwords

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• Assessing the routes
• Finding a marker
• Regularity
• Frequency
• Semantic Priming
• Strategic control
• Biasing a route

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Hangul Frequency Experiment

• 20 HF Hangul words
• 20 LF Hangul words
• 160 Filler words
• Hangul words
• Hanza words
• Hangul pseudowords
• Will frequency effect change as function of
  filler?

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Hangul Frequency Experiment

• Results
• Frequency effect larger with Hanza word fillers
• No effect with Hangul pw fillers
• Route can be emphasized according to list context

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Some Observations, Puzzles, and Implications

• How should we teach reading?
• The Great Debate
• Phonics
• Whole language
• Relation to the dual-route model
• English and the advantage of the lexical path --
  suggests whole language

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Some Observations, Puzzles, and Implications

• But, does the fluent adult reader use knowledge
  of the sound system?
• Rows-flower
• Children and phonological awareness