Statistical learning (SL) plays a key role in literacy acquisition. Studies have increasingly revealed the influence of SL on visual word processing, including the effects of word frequency at the lexical level and mappings between orthography, phonology, and semantics at the sub-lexical level. However, there has been scant direct evidence supporting neural representations of statistical regularities in visual word processing. Using time-resolved representational similarity analysis (RSA), the present study examined neural representations of different types of statistical regularities in visual word processing. From the perspective of predictive coding, an equal probability sequence with low built-in prediction precision and three oddball sequences with high built-in prediction precision were designed with consistent and three types of inconsistent (orthographically inconsistent, orthography-to-phonology inconsistent, and orthography-to-semantics inconsistent) Chinese characters as visual stimuli. In the three oddball sequences, consistent characters were set as the standard stimuli (probability of occurrence p = 0.75) and three types of inconsistent characters were set as deviant stimuli (p = 0.25), respectively. In the equal probability sequence, the same consistent and inconsistent characters were presented randomly with identical occurrence probability (p = 0.25). Significant neural representation activities of character frequency were observed in the equal probability sequence. By contrast, neural representations of sub-lexical statistics only emerged in oddball sequences where short-term predictions were shaped. These findings reveal that the statistical information obtained through long-term SL continues to play a role in current word processing mechanisms and these mechanisms can be modulated by short-term predictions.
Visual word processing involves the automatic decoding of orthographic, phonological and semantic information. The mappings of these information in a writing system comprise an important feature of visual words: orthographic regularity and consistency. Recent electroencephalography (EEG) studies have investigated the automatic processing mechanism of orthographic regularity (i.e., words vs. pseudowords) among visual words. However, the automated mechanism and temporal dynamics of different types of orthographic consistency effects (e.g., orthographic positional consistency, orthography-to-phonology consistency vs. orthography-to-semantics consistency) have never been studied. This study explored automatic neural representation for orthographic consistency effects in visual words and its temporal dynamics through an oddball paradigm. Three types of oddball sequences were designed with Chinese characters as stimuli, including consistent Chinese characters as standard stimuli and three types of inconsistent characters (orthographic positional inconsistent, orthography-to-phonology inconsistent vs. orthography-to-semantics inconsistent) as deviant stimuli, respectively. Significant visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) activities were observed in all three types of inconsistent characters, which suggests automatic processing caused by orthographic consistency violations. Time-resolved representational similarity analysis (RSA) further revealed that there are different temporal dynamics of automatic neural representations for the three types of consistency features. The representation of positional consistency emerged earlier within an independent time window, while the representation of phonetic and semantic consistency emerged later, and partially overlapped. These findings provide novel insights for the temporal gradient characteristics of automated representation structure of orthography consistency information.
Phonological awareness is a crucial factor for the development of reading ability. Yet, a comprehensive understanding of the impact factors of phonological awareness in early age is still a challenge. The current study investigated the contributions of character reading ability (CR), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to early phonological awareness (including phoneme awareness (PA) and syllable awareness (SA)) skill developmental trajectories in kindergarten children. A total of 127 young Chinese children were tracked two times. The dynamic phoneme deletion task, syllable deletion task, character reading task, and rapid object naming task were used to measure PA, SA, CR, and RAN, respectively. Cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) was used to examine the longitudinal and bidirectional relationship among these four reading skills. Results showed that performance improved on all four reading skills across the two points for children. Both of CR and RAN had low to moderate correlations with phonological awareness at both time points. Model results were as follows: 1) after controlling for child age, sex, and SES, there were significant positive autoregressive paths for PA, CR, and RAN; 2) SA, CR, and RAN at T1 significantly predicated PA at T2, but PA at T1 did not predict other reading-related skills at T2. 3) CR at T1 could positively predict SA at T2. Conclusion: CR, and RAN at earlier time were important impact factors of the development of phonological awareness, and larger phonological awareness units (syllable) not only precede but also impact the development of small units (phoneme).
The present study explored the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between Chinese phonological awareness and English reading and the cross-language transfer of different levels of PA to the English word and pseudoword reading among Chinese primary school children aged 6 to 8, who were beginners in English. Results showed that children’s Chinese phoneme awareness directly contributed to English pseudoword reading and predicted English word reading entirely through pseudoword reading. While the influence of Chinese onset-rime awareness on English reading is mediated exclusively through Chinese phoneme awareness. In addition, on the one hand, the bidirectional relationship between phonetic decoding and reading was found in the longitudinal English learning process. On the other hand, concurrent Chinese phoneme awareness could indirectly predict subsequent English pseudoword reading through concurrent pseudoword reading. Findings underscore the significant role of the cross-language transfer of Chinese PA in English reading and provided evidence that the coarse-grained representational unit of PA acts on reading through the fine-grained unit. Our findings also shed light on the evidence that native language proficiency directly affects second language acquisition and performance.
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