Beginning readers activate semantics from sub-word orthography

Letter coding in visual word recognition: The impact of embedded words

“…No significant effect on error rates was observed in this study, and certainly no indication of a weaker congruency effect for final than initial embedding position as suggested in the Bowers et al (2005) study. However, Nation and Cocksey (2009) did report such an interaction between congruency and position on error rates when testing children, though without any item analysis being reported.…”

Form–meaning links in the development of visual word recognition

“…The second perspective considered when and how children begin to access meaning from orthography. Although few data speak on this issue, Nation & Cocksey's (2009b) experiment provides clear evidence that 7-year-old children access meaning-level information from subword orthography, without phonological mediation. This shows that despite a relatively limited amount of reading experience, direct links have been made between orthographic and semantic representations.…”

“…Indeed, recent studies following this approach suggest that word recognition is surprisingly parallel and interactive, even in very young readers (e.g. Alario et al 2007;Nation & Cocksey 2009b).…”

“…First, given children's reliance on phonological decoding and the assumption that lexical access is heavily dependent on O!P!S mappings (Doctor & Coltheart 1980;Wagner & Torgesen 1987), Nation & Cocksey (2009b) predicted that semantic interference would be seen only when the embedded word shared its pronunciation with the carrier word (e.g. the plum in PLUMP versus the bus in BUSH).…”

“…Nation & Cocksey (2009b) asked 7-year-old children to make semantic decisions about words, using the semantic competition paradigm devised by Bowers et al (2005b). Items contained embedded words, for example, the word hip is embedded in the word ship.…”