(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
1
Reading
In this lecture we will discuss how people read single words. We will concentrate on the processes
that take the reader from print to sound and will not consider issues involving units larger than a
single word. We will consider how evidence from normal adults and those with acquired dyslexia can
inform models. We will also think about how children learn to read.
1 Skilled Single Word Reading
The models discussed here apply mainly to English but may also be extended to other alphabetic
scripts.
As skilled readers we are able to read all sorts of words. We are able to read non-words such as
‘bork’ or ‘fass’ and words that we have never seen before. This would imply that we are sounding out
words, assigning a phoneme to each grapheme. However, this does not account for our ability to read
irregular words such as ‘pint’ or ‘yacht’. If we always read through sounding out then we would
regularise the pronunciation of irregular words; this clearly doesn’t happen. Models of reading must
account for our ability to read these two different types of words.
1.1
The Dual Route Model (Coltheart et al)
The dual route model deals with non- and irregular words by positing two independent routes leading
from the printed word to sound.
1. The Direct Access route
This route is also known as the lexical route and accounts for the pronunciation of irregular words..
In this route, reading must proceed through the lexicon as we need information specific to individual
words in order to pronounce them correctly. This route can also account for the correct pronunciation
of homographs (e.g. ‘tear’).
2. The Grapheme-Phoneme Conversion route (GPC)
This route is also know as the non- or sub-lexical route as reading proceeds without access to the
lexicon. Each grapheme is assigned a pronunciation by mapping to a phoneme. This route accounts
for the pronunciation of new or non-words by phonological recoding.
Printed
word
LEXICON
Pronunciation
Simplified Dual Route Model
GRAPHEMEPHONEME
CONVERSION
RULES
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
1.2
2
The Evidence from Normal Readers:
1.2.1 Real Words
The dual-route model suggests that all real words both (irregular and regular) should be read by
accessing the lexicon.
1.2.1.1 Regularity effects
A robust finding is that the regularity of a word affects the time it takes to name it. For example a
regular word such as ‘wave’ is named more quickly than an irregular word such as ‘have’. There is
also an interaction with frequency. High-frequency words are relatively unaffected by regularity but
low-frequency words are highly affected
1.2.1.2 Neighbourhood effects
Glushko (1979) demonstrated that it is not just the regularity of the presented word that affects
reaction times but also the regularity of the word’s neighbours. Some regular words have neighbours
that are also regular. These words are consistent. Other regular words have some neighbours that are
not regular. These words are inconsistent
Regular consistent: MADE (GRADE, JADE, FADE)
Regular inconsistent: WAVE (SAVE, BRAVE, GAVE… but HAVE)
Glushko found that inconsistent words such as ‘wave’ are named more slowly than consistent words
such as ‘made’ even when these words are of similar frequency. Sometimes regular words are given
an irregular pronunciation.
1.2.1.3 Conclusion:
A simple dual route model is not sufficient to explain these findings. The dual route model would
predict that all real words should behave in a similar manner since they are all read by the lexical
route. However, we find that reaction times are affected by regularity, frequency and consistency.
1.2.2 Non-words
The dual-route model predicts that all non-words will be read by the GPC route. There are, however,
a number of problems with this suggestion.
1.2.2.1 Pseudohomophones
Pseudohomophones are non-words which sound like real words when they are spoken e.g. brane.
These words are named faster than other non-words but are rejected more slowly in lexical decision
tasks. There is a suggestion that this difference may be based on the visual appearance of the word.
1.2.2.2 Consistency Effects
Glushko (1979) demonstrated that consistency effects are also found for non-words. A non-word
such as ‘hean’ will be pronounced to rhyme with its neighbours all of which are regular (dean, lean,
mean). A non-word like ‘heaf’ that has inconsistent neighbours (leaf, deaf) will be named more
slowly and is sometimes even given the irregular pronunciation. This demonstrates that there are
lexical effects on the reading of non-words.
1.2.2.3 Conclusion
The simple suggestion that non-words are read by the GPC route is not accurate. Robust findings
indicate that knowledge of real words in the lexicon affects the processing of non-words.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
1.3
3
Evidence from the Acquired Dyslexias
Acquired dyslexias occur after a person suffers some kind of trauma to the (left hemisphere of the )
brain. Previously normal reading processes are disrupted. A tenet of cognitive neuropsychology is
that double dissociations revel things about normal processing. In this case a double dissociation is
predicted by the dual route model. Some patients should have an impaired direct access and
unimpaired GPC route while other patients should show the opposite pattern.
1.3.1 Surface dyslexia




Patients make over regularisation errors for irregular words
Can read both words and non-words well if they are regular
Show no effect of word frequency, part of speech or imagaebility
This suggests that there may be an impairment of the lexical route whilst the GPC route
remains intact.
However, it is very difficult to find clear-cut examples of patients who fit this pattern exactly. It is
often the case that there is slight impairment for regular words and some ability to read irregular
words. This has led to the suggestion that there may be more than one type of surface dyslexia. The
purest cases are termed Type 1 patients. Type 2 patients on the other hand may also have a slight
impairment when reading regular words that is interpreted as an additional minor impairment to the
GPC route.
1.3.2 Phonological dyslexia
 Patients are very poor at reading non-words
 Real words are read well regardless of regularity
 This suggests that the GPC route may be impaired whilst the lexical route is undamaged
Initial Conclusion
It seems that these two types of dyslexia do indeed demonstrate a double dissociation, which supports
the dual route model. However there are other forms of acquired dyslexia that suggest the situation is
more complicated.
1.3.3 Deep Dyslexia
 As with phonological dyslexics non-words are read poorly
 In addition there are semantic reading errors for real words such as “hate” for <kill>
 Therefore it seems that these patients have (in addition to problems with the GPC route) an
impairment to a system which normally allows reading though the semantic system.
There is considerable debate about deep dyslexia. It is not clear if it is really a syndrome (a set of
impairments that always cluster together because they have a single underlying cause) but the balance
of evidence suggests it probably is. Also, there is some suggestion that that deep dyslexia may be the
result of reading using the right-hemisphere. In this case deep dyslexia would not be relevant to a
model of normal reading. However, if we assume that deep dyslexia is a syndrome caused by a lesion
in the left hemisphere then we must conclude that it is possible to read through the semantic system in
a way that the simple dual-route model cannot account for.
1.3.4 Non-semantic reading
 Patients can pronounce both irregular and nonwords
 However, they have no comprehension of the (real) words they read
 This suggests that in these patients a direct orthographic to semantic route is impaired
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
4
Printed
word
GRAPHEMES
LEXICON
NONSEMANTIC
READING
GRAPHEME
– PHONEME
RECODING
SEMANTIC
SYSTEM
PHONOLOGY
pronunciation
Simplified three route model
1.4
Alternatives to the dual route model
1.4.1 Three Route Models
In these models the lexical route is split into two. The three routes are as follows.
 GPC route
 Route through the lexicon AND the semantic system (for accessing the meanings of
imeagable words)
 Route direct from the lexicon to the phonology (no semantics)
1.4.1.1 Normal Readers
Lexical effects on non-words and regularity effects on real words are seen as interaction between the
three routes.
1.4.1.2 Dyslexic readers
These models claim to account for the 4 types of dyslexia in the following way:
 Surface dyslexia is seen as a problem accessing the lexicon
 Phonological dyslexia is seen as loss of the GPC route
 Deep Dyslexia results from only being able to read through the lexical-semantic route which
works imperfectly due to damage or lack of interference from other routes
 Non-semantic dyslexia is a loss of the route from the lexicon to semantics
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
5
1.4.2 Analogy theories
These are single route theories (they have no sub lexical route). Lexicons now access PARTS of
written words (e.g. onset and rime). Any competing phonologies for these parts are accessed and the
system chooses the most common one. This theory has some difficulty in accounting for the dyslexia
evidence and also sometimes makes incorrect predictions for the pronunciation of non-words.
1.4.3 Connectionist Models
These models are also single route models. There is no storage of individual words. The models
contain 3 levels of units with each unit being connected to every other unit in the level above. The
connections between these weights are set by the model itself, which learns from experience. These
models often perform badly at predicting the pronunciation of non-words. Initial criticisms suggested
that they also could not explain the dyslexia evidence although more recent work has cast doubt on
this criticism.
Phonological
Units
Hidden
Layer
Visual
Units
Connectionist Model of Reading 1
Simplified connectionist model
2 Reading Development
In this section we will consider how children learn to read. Again we are dealing solely with
producing sound upon seeing text.
2.1
The Developmental Shift Hypothesis
Normally developing children go through a stage of using Grapheme Phoneme Conversion (GPC).
As we’ve seen adults use the direct lexical route for words that they know. This has led to the
hypothesis that there is a developmental shift from using the GPC route to using the lexical route.
However, the evidence does not support this hypothesis. For example an experiment by Barron and
Baron (1977) indicated that concurrent articulation does not affect the retrieval of meaning from the
printed word even for very early readers. This suggests that they are not using Grapheme-Phoneme
Conversion.
There is evidence to suggest that the developmental shift may work in the other direction with early
readers using the direct route and more mature readers using grapheme phoneme correspondences.
One such study is by Condry, McMahon-Rideout and Levy (1979). In part of their experiment they
presented subjects of different ages with a target word and two choice words. The subjects had to
decide which choice word was semantically more similar to the target word. Sometimes the distracter
rhymed with the target and sometimes not. The results showed that as they aged subjects were more
influenced by rhyming distracters.
Conclusion:
If there is a developmental shift between strategies it seems to be that the youngest readers use the
lexical route whilst older readers use the GPC route.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
2.2
6
Theories of Reading Development
The two most widely referred to theories of reading development reflect this shift from the lexical to
the GPC strategy.
2.2.1 Marsh et al (1981)
Stage 1: Linguistic Guessing
Children are able to read words if they are always presented in the same way. For example the first
words that a child can read are often names of shops or brand names. The child cannot guess at words
out of context but if given a context the child’s guess will be based on syntactic and semantic
information rather than any visual information from the target.
Stage 2: Discrimination net guessing
The child now uses graphemic cues to recognise words but only to the extent that is necessary to
differentiate all the words in the sight vocabulary. Reading errors are now semantically, syntactically
and graphemically based.
Stage 3: Sequential Decoding
The child begins to use grapheme phoneme correspondences. The child decodes words grapheme by
grapheme from the left to the right. The child can still only cope with one-to-one correspondences
and reading errors reflect this.
Stage 4: Hierarchical Decoding
Decoding is no longer grapheme by grapheme. Children can use analogies and conditional rules
(such as ‘magic e’).
2.2.2 Frith (1985)
Frith decided to modify Marsh’s model in order to make more apparent the links with models of
skilled reading. In Frith’s model new strategies are used in addition to older strategies rather than
replacing them
Stage 1:Logographic
The child recognises words using salient graphic cues. The child cannot read novel or non-words.
Stage 2: Alphabetic
The child uses individual grapheme to phoneme correspondences. Later the child can use
conditional rules
Stage 3: Orthographic
The child recognises strings of letters and accesses pronunciations without decoding these strings.
This is very much like analogy theory except the strings that the child uses are whole morphemes
rather than onsets and rimes.
Conclusion:
Both of these models recognise that the lexical direct access route is used before the GPC route.
2.2.3 What causes the shift from the lexical to the GPC strategy?
 Marsh: Shift from ‘Discrimination Net Guessing’ to ‘Sequential Decoding’
The number of words in the sight vocabulary causes the shift. The child now knows too many words
to distinguish them all by different graphemic cues.
 Frith: Shift from ‘Logographic’ to ‘Alphabetic’ strategies.
The shift is caused by the child’s increased phoneme awareness.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
2.3
Phonological awareness
The ability to reflect upon and manipulate the sounds of words
2.3.1 Levels of awareness
σ
‘dog’
O
R
O
N
d -- og
C
/d/ /o/ /g/
2.3.2 Testing phonological awareness
‘pat’, ‘cat’, ‘fan’
Oddity:
Odd one out -
Phonemic Fluency:
Words beginning with /t/
Identification:
What’s the sound at the end of ‘rabbit’
Counting:
Syllables
Phonemes
How many syllables in ‘television’
How many sounds in ‘dog’
Segmentation:
Syllables
Phonemes
‘car’ ‘pen’ ‘ter’
‘d’ ‘o’ ‘g’
Addition:
Syllables
Phonemes
add ‘pet’ to ‘car’
add ‘p’ to ‘ram’
Deletion:
Syllables
Phonemes
say ‘rabbit’ without the ‘bit’
say ‘rabbit’ without the /t/
Spoonerisms:
John Wayne >>> Won Jane
7
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
2.4
8
Phonological awareness in relation to reading
2.4.1 The Evidence from Children
2.4.1.1 Deletion
Beginning readers cannot delete phonemes from words. By the age of 9 children can do the task quite
easily (Bruce 1964). Other experiments (e.g. Calfee 1977) have shown that children of all ages
perform better when the phoneme to be deleted is the whole onset (e.g. they can delete /s/ from ‘sail’
but not from ‘snail’).
2.4.1.2 Counting
Work from the Haskins group in the 1970s suggests that young children can count syllables but not
phonemes.
2.4.1.3 Oddity Tasks
Pre readers can perform the oddity tasks for initial sounds (onsets) but not for end sounds (codas).
Beginning readers perform slightly better for end sounds.
Conclusion: Children are aware of syllables and onsets but not codas before they can read.
Awareness of codas increases after some reading experience. The suggestion is that they are aware of
onsets and rimes but not phonemes when they form only part of these units.
2.4.2 The Evidence from Illiterate Societies
Morais et al (1986) compared Portuguese people who either were or had been illiterate as adults. The
current illiterates performed worse on all the tasks than the former illiterates but were at a much worse
disadvantage for phonemes than for syllables.
2.4.3 The Evidence from readers of Non-alphabetic scripts
Read et al (1986) looked at the differences between two groups of Chinese readers. One group had
only been taught the traditional Chinese logographic script. The other group had also been taught
pinyin, which is an alphabetic script. The logographic group was much worse than the pinyin group
on phoneme addition and deletion tasks.
2.4.4 Overall Conclusion
People who have not (yet) learned to read have quite good awareness for syllables and onsets and
rimes. When a person learns to read their awareness of phonemes increases. However, the script
must be alphabetic for this to happen – a logographic script will not increase phoneme awareness.
Syllable Awareness
Dog
Onset-Rime Awareness
d - og
Phoneme Awareness
/d/ /o/ /g/
Developmental Progression
Alphabetic Reading
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
2.5
9
The Child’s use of Analogy
2.5.1 At what stage do children use analogies?
The models of both Frith and Marsh suggest that analogy type reading occurs at the last stage of
development. However the fact that children are aware of onsets and rimes from an early stage (and
are very sensitive to rhyme and alliteration) might suggest that they use this awareness to help them
read by analogy.
2.5.2 Evidence for the early use of analogies
Goswami found that even beginning readers can read new words by using analogies with words they
already know. The new words in the study could not have been read by grapheme-phoneme
conversion because they were irregular (e.g. beak). Neither could they have been read by the direct
lexical route as a pre-test determined which tests words were known by each child
2.5.3 Goswami and Bryant’s Theory of Development
This is a slightly different theory of reading as it does not have distinct stages but rather it has causal
links in a chain. These are as follows:
Before they learn to read children are aware of onsets and rimes (this awareness is facilitated by
games which focus on rhyme and alliteration). When they learn to read they use this awareness and
recognise that words with the same rimes are written with the same letters. This allows them to make
analogies in order to read new words. As they have more exposure to the alphabetic script children
become aware of phonemes. Later on they use this awareness to use GPC strategies in reading.
(Introduction to) Language History and Use – Psycholinguistics
Reading
Rachael-Anne Knight
Glossary
Grapheme: A letter or combination of letters that represents a phoneme
Concurrent Articulation: In certain experiments subjects are asked to constantly repeat a string of
sounds (e.g. ice cream) while performing another task
References
Review Chapters
Coltheart (ed.) (1987) Attention an Performance XII: The Psychology of Reading, Hove: Lawrence
Erlbaum (especially chapter 19 for adult reading)
Ellis, A. (1993) Reading, writing and dyslexia: A cognitive analysis, Hove, Lawrence Erlbaum
Eysenk, M. and Keane, M. (1995) Cognitive Psychology, Hove: Psychology Press (Chapter 12 for
adult reading, chapter 1 also has some information on neural nets)
Harley, T. (1995) The Psychology of Language, Hove: Psychology Press (Chapter 4 for both topics)
Harris, M. and Coltheart, M. (1989) language processing in Children and Adults, London: Routledge
(chapter 4 for learning to read and chapter 9 for dyslexia both available on reserve in the MML library)
Perfetti, C. (1994) “Psycholinguistics and Reading Ability” IN Gernsbacher, M. (ed.) Handbook of
Psycholinguistics, San Diego: Academic Press (for learning to read and phonological awareness)
Rayner, K. and Pollatek, A. (1989) The Psychology of Reading, Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum (Chapter 13
for models, chapter 11 for dyslexia and 10 for development of reading)
Wolf, M., Vellutino, F. and Gleason, J. (1998) “A Psycholinguistic Account of Reading” IN Gleason,
J. and Ratner, N (eds.) Psycholinguistics, Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace (for both subjects but especially
a very thorough review of models)
Some Original Papers
Models
Glushko, R. (1979) “The organization and activation of orthographic knowledge in reading allowed”,
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 5, 674-691
Coltheart, M., and Rastle, K. (1994) “Serial processing in reading aloud: Evidence for dual-route
models of reading”, Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 1197-1211.
Hinton, G., Plaut, D. and Shallice, T. (1993) “Simulating Brain damage”, Scientific American, 269
vol4, 58-65
Learning to Read
Goswami, U. and Bryant, P. (1990) Phonological skills and learning to read, London: Lawrence
Erlbaum
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