Effects of Rapid Word Recognition Training on Sentence Context Effects in Children

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the degree to which practice in isolated word recognition would affect children's speed of recognizing words presented within a sentence context. In the first experiment, it was found that both isolation and context methods of word recognition practice, relative to a control group, increased the speed with which second and third graders read words presented within a sentence context. In the second experiment, isolation practice was used to increase the speed of word recognition and the effect of this practice on developmental differences in the magnitude of sentence context effects was examined. Results indicated that word recognition practice had a marked impact on the benefit derived from reading words presented within a congruous versus a neutral sentence context and that this impact was relatively greater for younger readers. Specifically, the degree of facilitation ordinarily produced by congruous context in third graders was significantly reduced for those words on which practice had been given. In contrast, the effect of practice on the degree of contextual facilitation observed in sixth graders was much smaller. The results suggest that increased speed of word recognition per se interacts in a compensatory fashion with reliance upon context as an aid to facilitate word recognition.The purpose of the present study was to examine predictions derived from the time-locked assumption of the interactive-compensatory model proposed by Stanovich and West (1979). More specifically, this study investigated the effects of rapid word recognition training on the magnitude of sentence context effects in children. In studies investigating sentence context effects, the subject is instructed to read an incomplete sentence that serves as the context (e.g., "They went to the lake to do some"). The deleted last word is then presented and the latency to naming this last word is measured. It is usually found in these studies (e.g., Schwantes, 1982Schwantes, , 1985 that younger readers, relative to more experienced readers, show greater contextual facilitation for naming semantically congruous 395

Children's Use of Semantic and Syntactic Information for Word Recognition and Determination of Sentence Meaningfulness

“…The selection of subjects from these grade levels is consistent with those used by Raduege and Schwantes (1987) and Stanovich et al (1985) in their findings of developmental differences in context use to facilitate word recognition and, thus, affords maximal opportunity at replication and extension of their findings. Moreover, Willows and Ryan (1986) found that grammatical sensitivity showed substantial growth in grades one through three and speculated that there was little growth in grammatical sensitivity beyond Grade 5.…”

“…Such models frequently emphasize the automatic nature of lower level processes (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). The framework provided by this class of models is useful as a heuristic for organizing a number of important developmental findings such as work on the acquisition of automatic and rapid word recognition skills (Ehri & Wilce, 1983;Stanovich, Cunningham, & West, 1981) and the various methods of word recognition practice which facilitate this acquisition (Ehri & Roberts, 1979;Raduege & Schwantes, 1987).…”

Individual and developmental differences in semantic priming: Empirical and computational support for a single-mechanism account of lexical processing.

“…According to this model, older and good readers have fast and automatic word decoding skills and, thus, rely less on expectancy-based processes to facilitate or inhibit word recognition. By contrast, because their word decoding is slower and less automatic, younger and poor readers rely more heavily on expectancy-based processes (Raduege & Schwantes, 1987) and, thus, are expected to exhibit a greater degree of inhibition.…”

Automatic-Spreading Activation Effects following Children's Reading of Complete Sentences

“…The finding of relatively greater context effects on children's word recognition speed has frequently been interpreted in terms of children's greater reliance upon attentional expectancy effects (e.g., Raduege & Schwantes, 1987;Stanovich, 1986); however, there has been little research addressed to the role played by automatic expectancies in contributing to children's word recognition speed. The degree of spreading activation to items in semantic memory and the resulting facilitation obtained in recognizing such items has been assumed (cf.…”