Reading without semantics

Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains.

“…Given this correspondence, and following Glushko (1979) and Taraban and McClelland (1987), we will refer to words with many enemies and few if any friends as exception words, acknowledging that this definition excludes many words that would be considered exceptional according to GPC rules (e.g., many ambiguous words). Jared et al's hypothesis and supporting data also mesh well with other results demonstrating the inadequacy of a simple regular/irregular dichotomy, such as the "degrees of regularity" effect observed in acquired surface dyslexia (Shallice, Warrington, & McCarthy, 1983, also see Plaut, Behrmann, Patterson, & McClelland, 1993, for more direct evidence of consistency effects in surface dyslexia).It must be kept in mind, however, that a definition of consistency based solely on body neighborhoods, even if frequencyweighted, can provide only a partial account of the consistency effects that would be expected to operate over the full range of spelling-sound correspondences. Thus, for example, the word CHEF could not be considered inconsistent on a bodylevel analysis as all the words in English with the body EF (i.e., CLEF, REF) agree with its pronunciation.…”

“…Given this correspondence, and following Glushko (1979) and Taraban and McClelland (1987), we will refer to words with many enemies and few if any friends as exception words, acknowledging that this definition excludes many words that would be considered exceptional according to GPC rules (e.g., many ambiguous words). Jared et al's hypothesis and supporting data also mesh well with other results demonstrating the inadequacy of a simple regular/irregular dichotomy, such as the "degrees of regularity" effect observed in acquired surface dyslexia (Shallice, Warrington, & McCarthy, 1983, also see Plaut, Behrmann, Patterson, & McClelland, 1993, for more direct evidence of consistency effects in surface dyslexia).…”

“…Unfortunately, the way in which these pronunciations are generated and synthesized is rarely fully specified. Multiple-levels theories (Shallice & McCarthy, 1985;Shallice et al, 1983) dispense with the (direct) lexical route (or rather, incorporate it into the sublexical route) by assuming that spelling-sound correspondences are represented for segments of all sizes, ranging from single graphemes and phonemes to word bodies and entire morphemes.In a way, the SM89 framework can be thought of as an integration and more detailed specification of lexical-analogy and multiple-level theories (also see Norris, 1994, for a connectionist implementation of the latter). The pronunciations of nonwords are generated on the basis of the combined influence of all known word pronunciations, with those most similar to the nonword having the strongest effect.…”

“…Unfortunately, the way in which these pronunciations are generated and synthesized is rarely fully specified. Multiple-levels theories (Shallice & McCarthy, 1985;Shallice et al, 1983) dispense with the (direct) lexical route (or rather, incorporate it into the sublexical route) by assuming that spelling-sound correspondences are represented for segments of all sizes, ranging from single graphemes and phonemes to word bodies and entire morphemes.…”

The inconsistency of consistency effects in reading: The case of Japanese Kanji.

“…We call this a final hunt for consistency effects because, of course, any word composed of characters with both ON-and KUN-readings must by definition be an inconsistent word. That is, w e did not compare consistent and inconsistent words but rather two groups of inconsistent words; the contrast is therefore something more like that between regular inconsistent and exception inconsistent words in English or perhaps like exception words characterized as having different degrees of irregularity in English (Shallice et a]., 1983). As expressed in the general introduction, it is not even entirely clear whether it is the ON-or the KUN-reading of a character with both readings that should be tter is almost always not possible to do the token frequency of frie of the rnulticharacter worth c however, one can calculate applied to the present set of stimu mean number of two-character wor nent character that has ON-versus substantially more ON-than KU these characters, then despite the token frequencies, it seems reading words of the matched pairs woaid had., <fV9WfS^,.k higher summed-frequency friends than enentte,.…”