The influence of consistency, frequency, and semantics on learning to read: An artificial orthography paradigm.

Abstract

Two experiments explored learning, generalization, and the influence of semantics on orthographic processing in an artificial language. In Experiment 1, 16 adults learned to read 36 novel words written in novel characters. Posttraining, participants discriminated trained from untrained items and generalized to novel items, demonstrating extraction of individual character sounds. Frequency and consistency effects in learning and generalization showed that participants were sensitive to the statistics of their learning environment. In Experiment 2, 32 participants were preexposed to the sounds of all items (lexical phonology) and to novel definitions for half of these items (semantics). Preexposure to either lexical phonology or semantics boosted the early stages of orthographic learning relative to Experiment 1. By the end of training, facilitation was restricted to the semantic condition and to items containing low-frequency inconsistent vowels. Preexposure reduced generalization, suggesting that enhanced item-specific learning was achieved at the expense of character-sound abstraction. The authors' novel paradigm provides a new tool to explore orthographic learning. Although the present findings support the idea that semantic knowledge supports word reading processes, they also suggest that item-specific phonological knowledge is important in the early stages of learning to read.

Learning new vocabulary during childhood: Effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration

“…This suggests that for children, providing semantics during training may enhance the formation of a new phonological 8 Learning vocabulary in childhood representation. This fits with the view that orthographic learning involves the integration of phonological, orthographic and semantic representations, supported by findings that new written words presented with semantic information are identified more accurately than when words are presented in isolation (e.g., Ouellette & Fraser, 2009; see also McKay, Davis, Savage & Castles, 2008;Rueckle & Olds, 1993;Taylor, Plunkett & Nation, 2011;Wang, Nickels, Nation & Castles, 2013;Whittlesea & Cantwell, 1987). Importantly, however, studies are yet to examine the influence of semantic training on spoken word learning and lexical integration in children, hence the present study addresses this important issue.…”

How Word Meaning Influences Word Reading

“…In contrast, Wang, Nickels, Nation, and Castles (2013) found, using a similar paradigm, that 6-to 9-yearolds' ability to learn semantic information about novel words did predict later spelling of these words. The effect only held for exception words, a finding that has also been demonstrated in adults for reading aloud (Taylor, Plunkett, & Nation, 2011). In summary, training studies suggest that a child or adult who already knows, or has just learnt, the meaning of a word will find it easier to learn that word's spelling-to-sound mapping, especially if this is exceptional.…”

“…Another promising new method is multi-voxel pattern analysis, which can reveal the nature of the information represented in particular brain regions (for a relevant example see Nestor, Behrmann, & Plaut, 2013). Finally, if combined with artificial language learning paradigms, neuroimaging methods could reveal how teaching meanings for novel words influences subsequent neural responses to their written forms (Taylor et al, 2011;Taylor, Rastle, & Davis, 2014b).…”

Getting to the bottom of orthographic depth

“…However, as Hutlzer et al used a lenient marking criterion to evaluate the models' non-word reading performance, it is hard to make direct comparisons based on their reported data about the speed of acquisition of the sublexical correspondences. & Nation, 2011;Wang, Castles, & Nickels, 2012). In an orthographic learning study, participants are asked to learn new words.…”