A Dual-Route Approach to Orthographic Processing

Abstract

In the present theoretical note we examine how different learning constraints, thought to be involved in optimizing the mapping of print to meaning during reading acquisition, might shape the nature of the orthographic code involved in skilled reading. On the one hand, optimization is hypothesized to involve selecting combinations of letters that are the most informative with respect to word identity (diagnosticity constraint), and on the other hand to involve the detection of letter combinations that correspond to pre-existing sublexical phonological and morphological representations (chunking constraint). These two constraints give rise to two different kinds of prelexical orthographic code, a coarse-grained and a fine-grained code, associated with the two routes of a dual-route architecture. Processing along the coarse-grained route optimizes fast access to semantics by using minimal subsets of letters that maximize information with respect to word identity, while coding for approximate within-word letter position independently of letter contiguity. Processing along the fined-grained route, on the other hand, is sensitive to the precise ordering of letters, as well as to position with respect to word beginnings and endings. This enables the chunking of frequently co-occurring contiguous letter combinations that form relevant units for morpho-orthographic processing (prefixes and suffixes) and for the sublexical translation of print to sound (multi-letter graphemes).

Consonantal overlap effects in a perceptual matching task

“…Similarly, found a transposed-letter effect that was not restricted to the most posterior electrode sites, but rather had a broader distribution up to the median sites. Although the specific scalp topography seems to vary across studies, these previous data strongly support the hypothesis that components arising in this 120-200 ms time-window reflect an early perceptual process in which the mapping of visual features onto abstract orthographic representations has been initiated (see also Grainger & Ziegler, 2011).…”

“…Targets preceded by a transposed letter reference were associated with less negativegoing waveforms than targets preceded by a replaced letter reference. The authors concluded that letter strings triggered a qualitatively distinct type of processing compared to other types of character strings (see also Carreiras, Quiñones, Hernández-Cabrera, & Duñabeitia, 2015) and interpreted this pattern of effects as reflecting the initial parallel mapping of visual features onto location-specific letter identities, as proposed by Grainger and Ziegler (2011;see also Grainger & van Heuven, 2003). Besides, in masked priming studies of word processing, it has been shown that the N/P150 component, which occurs in the 125-175 ms time-window, is sensitive to physical differences between primes and targets (Chauncey, Holcomb, & Grainger, 2008;Massol, Grainger, Midgley, & Holcomb, 2012;Petit, Midgley, Holcomb, & Grainger, 2006), but also sensitive to the degree of orthographic overlap between primes and targets (Carreiras, Perea, Vergara, & Pollatsek, 2009;Grainger, Kiyonaga, & Holcomb, 2006).…”

“…The pattern of effects found in the 120-200 ms time-window reflects early stage of word processing in which information about visual features is mapped to abstract sub-lexical orthographic representations (see also Duñabeitia et al, 2012). According to the dual-route architecture for reading developed by Grainger and Ziegler (2011), the first stage of visual-word processing involves the coding of the information about the location of letter identities relative to the eye fixation. That is, at this level of letter detectors, the information about the position of the letters within a string in relation to the rest of the characters may not be encoded yet, given that the processes taking place at this stage are of visuoorthographic nature (see also Grainger, Dufau, & Ziegler, 2016).…”

Effect of Syllable Congruency in Sixth Graders in the Lexical Decision Task With Masked Priming

“…The results can also be discussed in light of the recent dual-route approach to orthographic processing proposed by Grainger and Ziegler (2011). In this framework, two orthographic codes are assumed to map orthographic strings to meaning, namely, a coarse-grained orthographic code and a fine-grained orthographic code.…”

Parafoveal preprocessing of word initial trigrams during reading in adults and children.

“…In Grainger and Ziegler's (2011) model, two sublexical orthographic codes are postulated which differ in terms of their level of precision of letter position encoding. In addition, these codes vary in their mapping of orthography either (a) directly onto semantic representations or (b) onto sublexical morphological and phonological representations that are already stored in the lexicon, and from there to semantics.…”