Alphabetism and the science of reading: from the perspective of the akshara languages

Nag, Sonali

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00866

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Kannada's oral language syntax is word order free, agglutinating, and inflections rich. Sound system in Kannada is alphasyllabery that represents sounds at the level of both the phoneme and the syllable simultaneously (Nag, 2014;Nag, Caravolas, & Snowling, 2010). The cognitive processes underlying reading in Kannada -an alphasyllabery language may depend on both syllabic and phonemic awareness, and English-an alphabetic language may largely depend on phonemic awareness (Nakamura, Koda, & Malatesha Joshi, 2013).…”

Section: Background Of the Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Initial and Later Procedural Learning Rates of Implicit Sequences in Good and Poor Readers of English

Sengottuvel¹

2018

Preprint

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Children with developmental disorders of reading are argued to have procedural learning deficits, such as incompetency to learn sequences. However, the evidence is weak. Learning in procedural system undergoes at least two well-known phases, initial acquisition and later offline consolidation. And, offline sequence learning is less studied in children with reading difficulties. In the present study, we present data on initial and later learning rates of implicit sequences in a group of children with (n=22) and without (n=22) reading difficulties in English whose native language is Kannada, a structurally distinct language to English. Our population is unique and were never studied on their procedural learning. They are unique in the sense that they receive extensive literacy exposure in English (which is their L2) from very early age, however, their oral fluency in L2 and text exposure in L1 are limited. We ran an implicit serial reaction time task to test their learning rates of 10- item visuo-spatial sequences on both initial and later sessions (> 24 & < 48 hours). Findings showed that poor readers showed slower learning rates only on later learning phase, where as their learning rate on initial learning phase was comparable to good readers. Further, learning slopes did not predict literacy scores in either of the groups. The importance of examining the learning processes holistically in children with reading difficulties and the findings’ potential contribution to informing the theories arguing procedural learning deficits are discussed.

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Section: Background Of the Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Initial and Later Procedural Learning Rates of Implicit Sequences in Good and Poor Readers of English

Sengottuvel¹

2018

Preprint

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“…In speech, however, the schwa is dropped in the case of the latter. These are governed by the conditional rules of schwa suppression that compromises the transparency and regularity of grapheme to phoneme mapping in Hindi (Nag, ). Another complexity is associated with the sound [r] that takes variable shapes when it is present in a consonant cluster.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In speech, however, the schwa is dropped in the case of the latter. These are governed by the conditional rules of schwa suppression that compromises the transparency and regularity of grapheme to phoneme mapping in Hindi (Nag, 2011a Languages and their orthographic variations affect reading and reading difficulties differentially concerning cognitive involvement (Perfetti & Harris, 2013;Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Written languages differ on at least two accounts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental dyslexia in Hindi readers: Is consistent sound‐symbol mapping an asset in reading? Evidence from phonological and visuospatial working memory

Bajre

Khan

2019

Dyslexia

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Phonological processing deficit is a hallmark of developmental dyslexia indicating a core cognitive dysfunction. Importance of working memory in reading and its association with the tasks measuring phonological processing is also debated in research. The present study investigates the role of working memory, phonological, and orthographic processing in Hindi‐speaking dyslexic children (22 dyslexic and 23 control, of Grade 4). Hindi has a consistent symbol‐sound mapping with an extensive list of visually complex graphemes. Although consistent symbol‐sound mapping facilitates reading, graphemic complexity has its cost on memory. A range of tasks measuring phonological processing, working memory, and orthographic knowledge was designed and administered. Dyslexic children scored significantly lower than controls not only on working memory tasks but also on the tasks of phonological processing and orthographic knowledge. Moreover, the difference in working memory between dyslexic and normal children was more pronounced with increased task complexity. These results highlight complex relationships between working memory, phonological and orthographic processing together with visual attentional processing in Hindi, that contribute to the reading deficits encountered by children with dyslexia. Their respective contributions are considered in the discussion with some of the visual and phonological features of Hindi orthography and their associated effects in reading.

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“…These languages, while belonging to distinct language families (Indo-European and Dravidian, respectively), are represented in writing using very similar orthographic design principles: both are highly transparent orthographies which employ the akshara or CV orthographic syllable as the basic unit of writing (Share and Daniels 2016), and both use extensive inventories of graphemes to indicate primary versus secondary, or ligatured, forms of vowels as well as consonants (see Karanth 2006;Nag 2014;Vaid and Gupta 2002). That is, in both scripts, there are different layers of complexity of representation of the orthographic syllables, a basic level, in which the akshara represent vowels alone or consonants with an inherent schwa, an intermediate level in which akshara represent consonant and vowel ligature combinations, and a complex level in which akshara represent conjunct consonants and vowel combinations.…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evidence for cross-language orthographic activation has predominantly come from orthographies that are structurally and also visually similar, in particular, languages using varieties of the Roman script; there has been a relative neglect of studies of other types of writing systems (Nag 2014;Reilly 2014). Language pairs typically studied have been DutchEnglish, English-French, and English-Spanish.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The processing cost for reading misaligned words is script-specific: evidence from Hindi and Kannada/Hindi readers

2017

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Among biscriptal readers do script-specific orthographic properties in one language affect the processing of words in their other language? This question was examined with respect to the seriality effect, a phenomenon first reported by Vaid and Gupta (Brain Lang 81:679-690, 2002). In this effect, native readers of Hindi are slower to name words whose written and spoken order is misaligned (e.g., the word win is written I-W-N), as compared to words containing letters whose written order is congruent with their spoken order. The present study examined whether the seriality effect is restricted to stimuli presented in the original script (Hindi) or carries over to affect processing in a structurally similar but visuospatially different script (Kannada) which does not have the same misalignment. In a lexical decision task, slower responses to misaligned than to aligned Hindi words were observed in both readers of Hindi and in KannadaHindi biliterates; however, biliterates' responses were not slower to cognates of Hindi misaligned words presented in Kannada script. These findings suggest that processing costs associated with orthographic conventions of a particular script do not carry over to another script, even when the scripts in question share similar design principles. More generally, our findings suggest that the processing of orthographic knowledge relating to the sequencing of sounds and letters is script-specific.

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Alphabetism and the science of reading: from the perspective of the akshara languages

Cited by 20 publications

References 22 publications

Initial and Later Procedural Learning Rates of Implicit Sequences in Good and Poor Readers of English

Initial and Later Procedural Learning Rates of Implicit Sequences in Good and Poor Readers of English

Developmental dyslexia in Hindi readers: Is consistent sound‐symbol mapping an asset in reading? Evidence from phonological and visuospatial working memory

The processing cost for reading misaligned words is script-specific: evidence from Hindi and Kannada/Hindi readers

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