Cross-linguistic Studies of Visual Word Recognition

1. Cross-linguistic Studies of Visual Word Recognition Greg Simpson Illinois State University

2. Word Recognition and Orthographies • The role of cross-linguistic studies in psychology • Universals vs language-specific phenomena • Confusing the subject matter with the language • Confusing the subject matter with the subjects • Languages chosen for certain characteristics

3. Word Recognition and Orthographies • Ambiguous words (e.g., count) • Number count • Handsome count • Context leads to activating one meaning, or • Context selects among activated meanings

5. Sample of the meanings of “Shi” • First tone: • Wet, poetry, teacher, model, example, troops, lion, hush, lose, break (promise), get lost, mishap, mistake, implement (v), bestow, grant, corpse, louse • Second tone: • Solid, true, honest, fruit, knowledge, ten, assorted stone, pick up, time, season, opportunity, occasionally, eat, erode • Third tone: • Drive, sail, excrement, arrow, swear, beginning, only then

6. Sample of the meanings of “Shi” • Fourth tone: • Room, market, city, persimmon, type, pattern, formula, try, examination, wipe, show, notify, look at, scholar, rely on, serve, lifetime, age, world, epoch, matter, business, trouble, accident, job, responsibility, swear, pledge, to die, power, momentum, situation, sign, gesture, to be correct, explain, be relieved of, set free, fit proper, comfortable, follow, family name, decorations, dress up, act a part

7. Word Recognition and Orthographies • Writing represents speech • A unit of writing represents a unit of the speech stream • Units of the speech stream • Morpheme: Logography (Chinese) • Syllable: Syllabary (Japanese) • Phoneme: Alphabet (Most of the rest)

8. Orthographic Transparency • Print-pronunciation relations • Opaque (e.g., English) • Lack of 1:1 relation of graphemes to phonemes • great/giant • sent/cent • morpheme • morpheme/shepherd • Transparent (e.g., Spanish, Korean) • Closer correspondence of graphemes to phonemes

10. Sejong the Great (1397-1450) • The most rational of all writing systems Watanabe & Suzuki (1981) • If rulers were ever measured by anything besides military exploits, [Sejong] would surely be among the foremost to have appeared on the stage of history. DeFrancis (1989) • An intelligent person can learn the system before the morning is over. Even the thick-headed can master it in ten days. Hangul scholar (ca. 1446)

11. Korean Orthography • The Hangul alphabet • Transparent • Letter shape • Related phonemes/related letters • Consonants and the vocal tract • Syllable block printing

12. Hangul Consonants

13. Origin of Consonant Shape

14. Hangul Vowels • Variations on vertical or horizontal line • Related vowels represented by similar letters (ah/yah, oh/yoh)

15. Syllable-block Printing

17. Hangul and Hanza

18. Hangul and Hanza naming • .8 Hanza/.2 Hangul • .2 Hanza/.8 Hangul

19. Dual-route Model • Phonological • Lexical • Neurological evidence • Acquireddyslexia • Word-reading evidence • Regular and irregular words • Nonwords

20. Assessing the routes • Finding a “marker” • Regularity • Frequency • Semantic Priming • Strategic control • Biasing a route

21. Hangul Frequency Experiment • 20 HF Hangul words • 20 LF Hangul words • 160 Filler words • Hangul words • Hanza words • Hangul pseudowords • Will frequency effect change as function of filler?

22. Hangul Frequency Experiment • Results • Frequency effect larger with Hanza word fillers • No effect with Hangul pw fillers • Route can be emphasized according to list context

23. Some Observations, Puzzles, and Implications • How should we teach reading? • The “Great Debate” • Phonics • Whole language • Relation to the dual-route model • English and the advantage of the lexical path -- suggests whole language

24. Some Observations, Puzzles, and Implications • But, does the fluent adult reader use knowledge of the sound system? • Rows-flower • Children and phonological awareness