Orthographic variations and visual information processing.

Abstract

Based upon an analysis of how graphemic symbols are mapped onto spoken languages, three distinctive writing systems with three different relations between script and speech relationships are identified.They are logography, syllabary, and alphabet, developed sequentially in the history of mankind. It is noted that this trend of development seems to coincide with the trend of cognitive development of children. This coincidence may imply that different cognitive processes are required for achieving reading proficiency in different writing systems.The studies reviewed include experiments on visual scanning, visual lateralization, perceptual demands, word recognition, speech recoding, and sentence comprehension. Results from such comparisons of reading behaviors across different orthographies suggest that human visual information processing is indeed affected by orthographic variation, but only at the lower levels (data-driven, or bottom-up processes).With respect to the higher-level processing (concept-driven, or top-down processes), reading behavior seems to be immune to orthographic variations. Further analyses of segmentation in script as well as in speech reveal that every orthography transcribes sentences at the level of words and that the transcription is achieved in a morphemic way. INTRODUCTIONEver since Rozin, Poritsky, and Sotsky (1971) successfully taught a group of second-grade nonreaders in Philadelphia to read Chinese, the question has been repeatedly raised: If Johnny can't read, does that mean Johnny really can't read in general or Johnny just can't read English in particular?

The Phonological Process with Two Patterns of Simplified Chinese Characters

“…Referring to the experimental data on the inhibition and facilitation of the phonological radical of bi-part character according to tasks, and the consistent frequency effect, phonological activation is primary, but lexical process is inevitable. Some studies concluded the primacy of phonological activation (e.g., Chen et al 1988, Hoosain andOsgood 1983;Jin 2013;Hung and Tzeng 1981;Peng et al 1985), and other studies remained to insist the lexical process is inevitable with Chinese (Baron and Strawson 1976;Leong 1986;Mattingly 1992). However, this study confirmed both the primacy of phonological process even in the semantically related tasks, and the inevitability of lexical process even in phonologically related tasks.…”

Short-term memory for Chinese characters and radicals

“…However, later research (e.g., Hung & Tzeng, 1981;Tzeng et al, 1977) strongly suggested that processing of…”

Children’s and adults’ use of spelling-sound information in three reading tasks

“…Writing systems differ in the manner in which they represent phonological information (Henderson, 1982;Hung & Tzeng, 1981;Rozin & Gleitman, 1977). As a consequence, there are variations between orthographies in the extent to which written words represent their pronunciations.…”

“…Because written English is based on an alphabetic principle, a skilled reader is likely to be able to pronounce correctly an unfamiliar word the first time it is seen. In Chinese, which is logographic, only a small proportion of characters represent phonological information, making it difficult for even a skilled reader to pronounce correctly an unfamiliar character (Hung & Tzeng, 1981). Orthographies have evolved toward a more direct representation of phonology, a fact that would be difficult to explain unless phonological information had a role in either skilled reading or learning to read.…”

“…It is possible that many words and symbols are recognized on a visual basis, with the phonological code subsequently read out of memory storage ("postlexical" phonological access), regardless of the manner in which they represent sound (Seidenberg, in press). One way to investigate whether readers use knowledge of orthographic-phonlogical correspondences in reading is to determine whether orthographies with a regular and direct encoding of phonology are easier to read than orthographies for which the mapping between the two codes is irregular or indirect (Hung & Tzeng, 1981;Katz & Feldman, 1981;Seidenberg, in press). However, just as orthographies differ in the extent to which they encode phonological information, so do words in English.…”