Shaping the precision of letter position coding by varying properties of a writing system

Abstract

There is substantial debate around the nature of letter position coding in reading. Research on a variety of Indo-European languages suggests uncertainty in position coding; for example, readers perceive transposed-letter stimuli (jugde) as similar to their base words (judge). However, these effects are not apparent for all languages. We developed a powerful new method to delineate how specific properties of a writing system shape the representation of letter position. Two groups of 24 adults learned to read novel words printed in artificial scripts. One group learned a dense orthography (i.e. with many anagrams) and one group learned a sparse orthography (i.e. no anagrams). Following four days of training, participants showed a larger transposed-letter effect in the sparse orthography than in the dense orthography. These results challenge existing models of orthographic processing in reading, and support the claim that orthographic representations are shaped by the nature of the writing system.

Grounding Second Language Vocabulary Instruction in Cognitive Science

“…Neuroimaging experiments also show more similar neural activation patterns in the regions coding the respective dimension for words similar in form or meaning (Zhao et al, 2017;Zinszer, Anderson, Kang, Wheatley, & Raizada, 2016), even reflecting individual associations (Charest, Kievit, Schmitz, Deca, & Kriegeskorte, 2014). Such neighborhoods could influence learning both positively and negatively (Karuza et al, 2016;Lally, Taylor, Lee, & Rastle, 2020;Meade, Midgley, Dijkstra, & Holcomb, 2018;Stamer & Vitevitch, 2012, Storkel, Armbrüster, & Hogan, 2006Weber & Broersma, 2012).…”

“…Learning form-similar L2 words (e.g., comprehensive and comprehensible) has been suggested to cause interference and potentially confuse the learner (Laufer, 1988;Nation, 2000). However, some recent studies have shown a learning benefit when form-similar words are presented together (e.g., Lally et al, 2020;van de Ven, Segers, & Verhoeven, 2018). Whether form similarity helps or confuses may depend on task demands: Indeed, both these studies implicitly required learners to make close distinctions between the similar words.…”

Does orthographic processing emerge rapidly after learning a new script?

“…More recently, Lally et al . (2020) conducted an experiment in which participants learned 24 five‐letter pseudowords either in a sparse or in a dense artificial orthography, using a between‐subject design, during a four‐day training. (The 24 pseudowords in the dense orthography included 12 anagram pairs, whereas none of the 24 pseudowords sparse included anagrams.)…”

“…Therefore, the findings reported by Lally et al . (2020) are a demonstration that the properties of the writing systems may modulate how letter order is encoded in a newly learned script.…”

“…On the emergence of orthographic processing when learning-to-read a new script Recent research with adult readers has shown that orthographic processes can emerge rapidly after learning a script during a relatively short amount of time (e.g., Chetail, 2017;Lally, Taylor, Lee & Rastle, 2020;Taylor et al, 2011). For instance, in the Taylor et al's (2011) experiments, adults learned 36 words in an artificial script during 30-45 min.…”