The Missing-Phoneme Effect in Aural Prose Comprehension

Saint‐Aubin, Jean; Klein, Raymond M.; Babineau, Mireille; Christie, John; Gow, David W.

doi:10.1177/0956797616645096

Cited by 3 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In effect, similar psycholinguistic processes operate during oral comprehension and reading, no doubt because reading, aside from the necessity for print-to-sound and print-to-meaning conversions, is built upon oral comprehension skills. In a recent study, we asked one group of participants to read texts for comprehension while searching for a target letter and another group to listen to narrations of the same texts while listening for the corresponding target letter’s phoneme (Saint-Aubin, Klein, Babineau, Christie, & Gow, 2016). In the listening task, we observed a large “missing-phoneme effect”: Participants missed more phonemes embedded in function than in content words, even after we controlled for acoustic factors that covaried with word class.…”

Section: An Analogous Missing-phoneme Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each dot represents the two omission rates for the same target-containing word contributed by different groups of participants who read and listened, respectively. Reprinted from "The Missing-Phoneme Effect in Aural Prose Comprehension," by J. Saint-Aubin, R. M. Klein, M. Babineau, J. Christie, andD. W. Gow, 2016, Psychological Science, 27, p. 1023.…”

Section: An Analogous Missing-phoneme Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Illustrates the usefulness of the MLE for assessing reading skills at the elementary school level. Saint-Aubin, J., Klein, R. M., Babineau, M., Christie, J., & Gow, D. W. (2016). (See References).…”

Section: Recommended Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What a Simple Letter-Detection Task Can Tell Us About Cognitive Processes in Reading

Klein

Saint‐Aubin

2016

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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Understanding reading is a central issue for psychology, with major societal implications. Over the past five decades, a simple letter-detection task has been used as a window on the psycholinguistic processes involved in reading. When readers are asked to read a text for comprehension while marking with a pencil all instances of a target letter, they miss some of the letters in a systematic way known as the missing-letter effect. In the current article, we review evidence from studies that have emphasized neuroimaging, eye movement, rapid serial visual presentation, and auditory passages. As we review, the missing-letter effect captures a wide variety of cognitive processes, including lexical activation, attention, and extraction of phrase structure. To account for the large set of findings generated by studies of the missing-letter effect, we advanced an attentional-disengagement model that is rooted in how attention is allocated to and disengaged from lexical items during reading, which we have recently shown applies equally to listening.

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Section: An Analogous Missing-phoneme Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Analogous Missing-phoneme Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What a Simple Letter-Detection Task Can Tell Us About Cognitive Processes in Reading

Klein

Saint‐Aubin

2016

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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“…Although this difference could be called upon to account for the omission rate difference across experiments, such an explanation is unlikely. In effect, previous studies have shown a similar omission rate in a condition in which one function word was repeated multiple times and compared with multiple content words and in a condition in which multiple occurrences of one function word were compared with multiple occurrences of one content word (see, e.g., Saint-Aubin et al, 2003, 2016). Instead, the difference is likely to be due to differences between the two texts such as text complexity or to the implemented controls.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

The missing-colour effect: The attentional beam captures reading-relevant and reading-irrelevant information

Saint‐Aubin

Deacon

Klein

et al. 2020

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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According to many models, reading is driven by an attentional beam. In two experiments, we investigated the specificity of the beam by testing its sensitivity to a reading-irrelevant feature: colour. More specifically, participants were asked to read either a black-and-white version or a multi-colour version of the text in which each letter was printed in a different colour. In addition, while reading for comprehension, participants either searched for a target letter ( t or d) or for a colour (pink or black). In Experiment 1, we used the Nelson–Denny reading test and in Experiment 2, we used an experimental text. In both the experiments, the typical missing-letter effect was observed with letters: Participants missed more letters in function than in content words. Most importantly, although the effect was smaller, this pattern of results was also observed when participants searched for a colour (e.g., pink or black letters in a multi-coloured passage). Our results suggest that the attentional beam involved in reading is sensitive to both reading-relevant and reading-irrelevant information.

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“…To investigate the possibility of finding an aural analog to the missing-letter effect while overcoming the issues found in earlier studies by Schneider et al (1989Schneider et al ( , 1991, Saint-Aubin et al (2016) presented the narration of a text lasting 2-3 min with many occurrences of the target phoneme. Participants were asked to listen for comprehension and to press a button every time they detected a given phoneme.…”

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confidence: 99%

Aural and written language elicit the same processes: Further evidence from the missing-phoneme effect.

Laplante,

Geraghty,

Hendel

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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When readers are asked to detect a target letter while reading for comprehension, they miss it more frequently when it is embedded in a frequent function word than in a less frequent content word. This missing-letter effect has been used to investigate the cognitive processes involved in reading. A similar effect, called the missing-phoneme effect has been found in aural language when participants listen to the narration of a text while searching for a target phoneme. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that both effects derived from the same cognitive processes, by isolating the role of word frequency and word function. In Experiment 1, we used a paper and pencil procedure for reading and a continuous narration for the listening task. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used a rapid serial visual or auditory presentation procedure to control for the effects of preprocessing upcoming information: parafoveal processing in reading and coarticulation in aural language processing. Parallel findings were observed in the reading and listening tasks. In all experiments, there was an effect of word function, and there was an effect of word frequency in Experiments 1 and 3. Results are interpreted in light of the attentional disengagement model.

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The Missing-Phoneme Effect in Aural Prose Comprehension

Cited by 3 publications

References 40 publications

What a Simple Letter-Detection Task Can Tell Us About Cognitive Processes in Reading

What a Simple Letter-Detection Task Can Tell Us About Cognitive Processes in Reading

The missing-colour effect: The attentional beam captures reading-relevant and reading-irrelevant information

Aural and written language elicit the same processes: Further evidence from the missing-phoneme effect.

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