ReadingReading ReadingReading

Logograms• Def – ideograms that represent a word or

morpheme in addition to a concept• Chinese writing system – mostly logographic.

(Some characters have phonetic components)– Egyptian hieroglyphs also developed into a

logographic writing system, since they correspond to sounds and words

English logograms $, @, %, X (as in XING)

Syllabaries• Writing systems

that have one symbol for each syllable– Not practical for

languages such as English, which have ~14,000 possible syllables

Left – romanji (Roman syllable)Middle – hiragana

Right - Kanji

Alphabetic Writing Systems

• Follow the phonemic principle. (Mostly) represent phonemes in a language – not allophones! (which distinguishes them from phonetic

alphabets) • First alphabetic script: Semitic

– Developed in Syria and Palestine between 1500 and 2000 B.C.

Example of the phonemic principle: plural “s” is always written with the same letter, regardless of whether it’s actually [s] or [z]

Different kinds of alphabets

• Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic): only consonants • Greek (adapted into Latin, Cyrillic, …):

consonants and vowels• Korean: phonemes represented in units of

syllables

abcde αβγδε

абвгд אבגדה

ابتثج

Korean: phonemic units grouped by syllable

• 17 consonants and 11 vowels– /l/ and /r/ represented by the same symbol, as

variants of the one phoneme

• Consonants drawn to depict the place of articulation– /m/ - suggests closing lips– /k/ suggests raising back of tongue to velum

• Grouped into blocks, each representing a syllable

Psycholinguistics and reading

• How does the style of writing affect the process of reading? – L R / R L / top bottom– logographic / syllabic / alphabetic– vowels written or not– sound-symbol correspondence

Psycholinguistics and reading

• logographic systems: – high memory load, right hemisphere

activity?

• syllabaries: – easy symbol-sound correspondence,

abstract symbols. longer words (mean > 2.1 syllables)

• alphabets: – if (ir)regular spelling, difficult to decode?

Reading is NOT innate!

• Children & non-readers have no natural desire to link word length with visual length!

–show children the words “two” and “toothbrush”, say the words to them, and they perform at chance, with no preference of matching the longer words with each other

How do we learn to read?

• Phonetically? (phonologically)– Easy with high letter-sound

correspondences – Children 9-10 y.o. read better when taught

phonetically (in English)

– Intermediate readers read phonologically – Fluent readers read orthographically

where/wear, too/two

How do we learn to read?

• Direct Route? – Whole-word, “look and say” methods – Higher initial success

– But fluent readers have little difficulty in identifying words in unfamiliar forms

- AlTeRnAtInG cAsE only slows word recognition by 10%

-Cmabridge e-mail forward

The Protoliteracy Period

• Early period when precursors of written language are set (Barron, 1992)

• 2 best predictors of reading achievement: – phonological skills (syllables, rhyming)– ability to recognize letters

Developing phonological skills

• Phonological skills develop in stages:– First: segment syllables

• ma.ma / da.dy

– Then: separate onsets and rimes• cat / bat / mat / hat / rat • dad / did / do / dug / dinner / dog

– Finally: recognize individual phonemes• peach / speech speed / spud

Linguistic guesswork:Developing phonological

awareness

• Guessing words based on one or more letters– “like” as “black”– “of” as “off”

• Invented spelling: (reflects what they do/don’t hear in the speech stream)– “numbers” AS nubrs– “lady” AS lade– “genius” AS gnus (Treiman, 1993)

Does your writing system shape your phonological

development?

• Japanese children cannot initially segment words at the phonemic level (neither can literate Chinese adults)

• But English children can by 2nd Grade – Phonemic awareness develops because of

exposure to phonemic writing system

Reading Studies

• fMRI’s – don’t access sounds in reading: – In normal reading, phonological

processing areas aren’t active• Become active in rhyming tasks

• Frequency matters! – Do we read “sesquipedalian” the same

way we read “feet”?

IS X a part of the body?

• Guy van Orden – Homophones• Task: judge whether words like ___ are…

(e.g. parts of the body): – FEAT / HARE

• Errors happen more often with infrequent words in a language. (less often with pairs like SUN / SON)

Conclusion: frequent words are accessed directly, but less frequent words are accessed through their sounds

Another example:

• Eye want two play tennis, butt eye dew knot have uh racket!

• (if our access were completely phonological, this should not be hard to understand!)

Measuring Subvocalization

• Micro-muscular movements occur if accessing phonology– In beginning and intermediate

readers – When fluent readers encounter new,

uncommon, or difficult words

Eye-tracking http://www.mpi.nl/world/tg/eye-tracking/eye-

tracking.html

• fixation: the length of time the eye is focused on one spot (>200-250 ms)

• saccade: quick jumps between fixations, little or no information gained (25-30 ms)

• lengths of fixations influenced by: – word length, frequency, grammatical function (longer

fixations on verbs than nouns), predictability, overall complexity

Fun note: your eyes spend approximately 50 minutes/day

jumping in saccades, (Prof. David Erwin –

UIUC)

Fixations

• In English, a fixation allows you to “see”: (2 or 3 + X + ~15) letters

that underlined l underlined letter yo

letter your eye landed

• image on retina is fairly symmetrical around fixation point

that underlined letter yo

Size/Direction of saccades• Length of saccade depends on script

– In Chinese – 2 characters (2 whole words)– Japanese – 3.5 characters (syllables)– Hebrew – 5.5 characters (no vowels written)– English - 7 +/- 3 characters (vowels and

consonants)

• In English, 85-90% of jumps are rightward– direction of saccades determined by language

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

you can gain information from a large window of text

Eye-tracking Experiments (McConkie & Rayner)

• Manipulated number of characters viewed to see how far ahead/behind we look while reading

• Anything less than: (2or3 + X + 15) letters slows reading time

• No improvements with larger windows• Only current word under fixation is

actually recognized

the politician read the spaach to his colleagues

the politician read the speech to his colleagues

Eye-tracking Experiments (McConkie & Rayner)

• SPAACH presented until it was time for the eyes to fixate on the word, and then replaced with SPEECH

• If the change happened:– > 12 characters to the left of SPAACH, no extra

fixations – 7-12 characters to the left, no conscious ability

to notice change, but increased fixation time– within fixation, subjects are aware of change

the politician read the blaart to his colleagues

the politician read the speech to his colleagues

Eye-tracking Experiments (McConkie & Rayner)

• BLAART presented, then replaced with SPEECH• If the change happened:

– > 12 characters to the left of BLAART, no extra fixations

– 7-12 characters to the left, not conscious of change, but longer fixation time than with SPAACH

• Some visual information is gained prior to actual fixation !

+

invincible

What was the word?

+

intolerable

What was the word?

invincible +

intolerable+

Where in the word do we fixate?

• Kevin O’Regan: fixate on point, then word appeared – centered around that point, or shifted to one side or another

• Optimum position just left of center of word

• Short/predictable words can be recognized while eyes are fixating on preceding word

(They don’t have their own fixations)

Reading is automatic(you can’t help but read this!)

• In psychology, we distinguish between: – automatic processes: understanding first

language, breathing, feeling hunger, and reading (for fluent readers)

– attentional processes: focusing on task, understanding foreign language, reading (for beginners)

Stroop task http://www.snre.umich.edu/eplab/demos/st0/stroopdesc.html

• Demonstrates the automaticity of reading (Also shows our inability to “turn off” our native language)

• Used in WWII to detect spies