Module 11 Language 3

Cognitive Psychology Notes Module 11: Language 3 Reading Systems and Orthography  Types of Writing Systems: o Logographic: Symbols represent words or morphemes (e.g., Chinese characters). o Syllabic: Symbols represent syllables (e.g., Japanese Kana). o Alphabetic: Symbols (letters) represent individual phonemes (e.g., English, Greek).  Phonemes vs. Letters: o Words are made up of distinct sounds (phonemes), which are represented by letters or letter combinations. o English phonemes can be complex (e.g., “th” can sound like /θ/ or /ð/). Orthographic Depth  Orthographic Depth: Refers to how consistently letters map to sounds. o Shallow Orthographies: Consistent letter-to-sound mappings (e.g., Finnish). o Deep Orthographies: Inconsistent mappings; pronunciation/spelling can vary (e.g., English).  Feedforward and Feedback Consistency: o Feedforward (FF): How easily a written word's pronunciation can be determined. o Feedback (FB): How easily a spoken word can be spelled. English is inconsistent in both FF and FB, making it harder to read compared to languages like Finnish. Phonemic Awareness and Literacy  Phonemic Awareness: Understanding that words consist of individual sounds (phonemes); crucial for reading success. o Key Studies:  Portuguese Study (Morais et al., 1979): Literate individuals outperformed illiterate individuals in phoneme deletion tasks.  Chinese Study (Read et al., 1986): Learning an alphabetic script (like Pinyin) helps with phoneme awareness, even for speakers of a logographic language. Reading Models  Dual-Route Cascaded Model (Coltheart et al., 2001): o Two routes for reading: 1. Grapheme-Phoneme Conversion (GPC): Translates letters into sounds (used for unfamiliar or nonwords). 2. Lexical Route: Directly recognizes whole words (used for familiar words, including irregular words). o Surface Dyslexia: Difficulty reading irregular words. o Phonological Dyslexia: Difficulty reading nonwords. o Deep Dyslexia: Difficulty reading nonwords and makes semantic errors.  Distributed Connectionist Approach (Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989): o Emphasizes the integration of semantic, orthographic, and phonological information. o Learning occurs through experience and exposure. o Experiment on Orthographic Processes  Tyler & Burnham (2006): o Experiment tested if orthographic knowledge interferes with phoneme tasks. o Method: Participants removed specific sounds from words (e.g., “take /s/ from ‘spets’”). o Result: Longer reaction times for tasks where orthographic (spelling) information conflicted with the phoneme removal task. Differences in Language Learning  Orthographic Transparency: Explains why languages like Finnish (with consistent mappings) are easier to learn compared to English.  Seymour, Aro, & Erskine’s (2003) Study: o Finnish children quickly master reading due to consistent grapheme-phoneme rules, unlike English-speaking children who take longer. Key Terms and Concepts:  Word Superiority Effect: Easier to recognize letters within words than in isolation.  Semantic Priming: Faster recognition of words when preceded by related words.  Dyslexia Subtypes: o Surface, phonological, and deep dyslexia based on different impairments in reading processes. Key Takeaways:  Learning to read changes how we perceive and process speech sounds.  Different writing systems and orthographic depth influence reading acquisition.  Reading models help explain why some people struggle with specific aspects of reading, such as irregular word recognition or nonword reading.