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Cognitive Psychology C81COG3. What Kind Of Memories Are

Necessary To Support Reading?

Dr Jonathan Stirk

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What Kind Of Memories Are Necessary To Support Reading?

Overview Lexical Memory, Working Memory and Semantic

Memory– three different uses of memory while reading

not necessarily three different memory systems The Role of Speech Recoding in Reading

– Creating speech-based memories from a visual input– Is this essential when reading?

Working Memory (STM)– serves the "Comprehension Calculation" (remembering

words from the beginning of the sentence so that they can be integrated with later words)

Background Reading

Chapter 1.– Underwood, G. & Batt, V. (1996). Reading and

Understanding. Blackwell:UK.

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Lexical Memory, Working Memory and Semantic Memory

LEXICAL MEMORY to know word meanings– Is BURD a word?– Are MOURN and GRIEVE synonyms?

WORKING MEMORY to calculate sentence meanings– Does this string of words make any sense?– “Noisy lecturers disturb hardworking students

when they are trying to sleep”

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Lexical Memory, Working Memory and Semantic Memory

SEMANTIC MEMORY to appreciate text meanings. Compare the following sentences:– "When she saw the possibility of some fun,

Pussy Galore winked at James Bond and they disappeared for some time together"

– "When she saw the possibility of some fun, Elizabeth Bennet winked at her sister Jane and they disappeared for some time together"

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Lexical Memory, Working Memory and Semantic Memory

SEMANTIC MEMORY to appreciate text meanings. Does the following make sense?– “The man ordered a hamburger from the menu and

then waited. When his food eventually arrived it was cold. He stormed out of the restaurant. The waitress picked up a big tip.”

We use scripts to help us to interpret commonly occurring situations/events (Schank & Abelson, 1977)– restaurant script (entering, ordering, eating,

leaving)– cinema script– lecture script

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Working Memory- Baddeley & Hitch (1974)

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Speech Recoding in Reading - The Pseudohomophone Effect (Rubenstein, Lewis & Rubenstein, 1971)

The Lexical Decision Task:– “Look at this string of letters, and decide whether they form a

word. Then press the YES button or the NO button.”

  Response Time (msec)

“YES” Response Non-homophonic words (GIFT; WALL) 760  Homophonic words (WEAK; SAIL) 791“NO” Response Illegal non-words (LIJK; SAGM) 859  Legal non-words (ROLT; BARP) 1013 Pseudohomophones (BURD; GROE) 1076

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Speech Recoding in Reading - The Pseudohomophone Effect  (Barron, 1978)

Task 1:– Good vs. Poor

Readers with a lexical decision task

– 10/12 year old pairs with matched chronological age

– Reading mental age differs by 2 years within a pair

960

980

1000

1020

1040

1060

1080

1100

1120

1140

Good Readers Poor Readers

RT

(m

secs

)

legal non-words

Pseudohomophones

Legal non-words Pseudohomo-phones

Good readers

1019 ms << 1087 ms

Poor Readers

1099 ms < 1129 ms

Not signif!Significant

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Speech Recoding in Reading - The Pseudohomophone Effect  (Barron, 1978)

Task 2: – Pronunciation task with the same young

readers– The correlation between reading speed (using

pronunciation time as the measure) and the size of an individual's pseudohomophone effect r = +0.30*

– So: faster readers have larger/stronger pseudohomophone effects

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Faster readers have larger pseudohomophone effects

Siz

e of

effe

ct

Reading speed

slow fast

r = 0.3

Fast readers show larger pseudohomophone effects

Fast readers quickly apply GPC rules

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Suppression of Speech Recoding While Reading (Kleiman, 1975)

Readers are prevented from recoding print into sub-vocal speech by having them shadow lists of digits while performing the reading tasks.

Compare normal readers against shadowing readers to obtain the decrement caused by shadowing.

Question: Which reading tasks suffer a decrement in performance when shadowing (speech suppression) is required?– these are the reading tasks that require speech

recoding– if a reading task can be performed without a speech

suppression decrement, then we will conclude that this component of reading does not require speech recoding

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Suppression of Speech Recoding While Reading (Kleiman, 1975)

EXPT. 1 RT increase (msec)

a. Graphemic Decisions:– do these two words look the same?

e.g. HEARD/BEARDGRACE/PRICE 125

b. Phonemic Decisions:– do they sound the same?

e.g. TICKLE/PICKLELEMON/DEMON 372

c. Semantic Decisions:– do they mean the same?

e.g. MOURN/GRIEVEDEPART/COUPLE 120

LARGE DISRUPTION

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Suppression of Speech Recoding While Reading (Kleiman, 1975)

Graphemic and Semantic Decisions are less affected by speech suppression than Phonemic Decisions

Graphemic Decisions should not logically require speech recoding. So does this mean that Semantic Decisions do not require speech recoding either?

Question: why does speech recoding look as if it is necessary for word recognition, from the Pseudohomophone Effect?

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Dual Access Model

Visual Analysis

G-P-C Rules

Mental Lexicon

Written Word

Visual representation of stimulus

Auditory representation of stimulus

Direct route

Indirect route

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Suppression of Speech Recoding While Reading (Kleiman, 1975)

EXPT. 2 RT increase (msec)

a. Graphemic Word Search– does the word BURY look like any of the words in the

sentence?– “YESTERDAY THE GRAND JURY ADJOURNED” 140

b. Phonemic Word Search– does the word CREAM sound like any of the words in the

sentence?– “HE AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM” 312

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Suppression of Speech Recoding While Reading (Kleiman, 1975)

EXPT. 2 cont’d RT increase

(msec) c. Categorical Word Search

– are there any members of the category GAMES in the sentence?

– “EVERYONE AT HOME PLAYED MONOPOLY” 78 d. Sentence Acceptability

– does this sentence make any sense?– “PIZZAS HAVE BEEN EATING JERRY”

394

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Suppression of Speech Recoding While Reading (Kleiman, 1975)

EXPT. 2 shows that Graphemic and Phonemic Word Searches follow the same pattern as in Experiment 1– speech recoding is required for the Phonemic

task but not for the Graphemic task. The Categorical Word Search (equivalent to

the Semantic Decision in Expt. 1) again follows the same pattern as the Graphemic task.

Sentence Acceptability suffers most from speech suppression– Kleiman concludes that this task uses

Working Memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), and that this requires the use of speech recoding

Graphemic 140

Phonemic 312

Categorical /Semantic 78

Sentence acceptability 394