1
|
De Simone E, Moll K, Feldmann L, Schmalz X, Beyersmann E. The role of syllables and morphemes in silent reading: An eye-tracking study. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2023; 76:2493-2513. [PMID: 36803303 PMCID: PMC10585950 DOI: 10.1177/17470218231160638] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/29/2022] [Revised: 11/08/2022] [Accepted: 12/07/2022] [Indexed: 02/23/2023]
Abstract
German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. This study aimed to unveil which of these sublexical units are the preferred units of reading by employing eye-tracking technology. Participants silently read sentences while their eye-movements were recorded. Words were visually marked using colour alternation (Experiment 1) or hyphenation (Experiment 2)-at syllable boundary (e.g., Kir-schen), at morpheme boundary (e.g., Kirsch-en), or within the units themselves (e.g., Ki-rschen). A control condition without disruptions was used as a baseline (e.g., Kirschen). The results of Experiment 1 showed that eye-movements were not modulated by colour alternations. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that hyphens disrupting syllables had a larger inhibitory effect on reading times than hyphens disrupting morphemes, suggesting that eye-movements in German skilled readers are more influenced by syllabic than morphological structure.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Elisabetta De Simone
- School of Psychological Sciences and Macquarie Centre for Reading, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Kristina Moll
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Lisa Feldmann
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Elisabeth Beyersmann
- School of Psychological Sciences and Macquarie Centre for Reading, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Gemignani M, Giannotti M, Schmalz X, Rigo P, De Falco S. Attentional Prioritization of Infant Faces in Parents: The Influence of Parents' Experiences of Care. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022; 20:527. [PMID: 36612848 PMCID: PMC9819530 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20010527] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2022] [Revised: 12/19/2022] [Accepted: 12/22/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
Infant faces are prioritized by the attentional system in parents, resulting in a greater cognitive engagement in terms of response time. However, many biological, contextual and environmental factors relating to this cognitive mechanism have been left unexplored. To fill this gap, this study aims to (i) confirm that infant faces engage more attention compared to adult faces; (ii) investigate whether the attention to infant faces is affected early care experiences of parents; (iii) explore the effect of parents' sex by taking the amount of involvement with early childcare into consideration. 51 mothers and 46 fathers completed a modified Go/no-Go task, a brief sociodemographic questionnaire, the short version of the Adult Parental Acceptance-Rejection scale, and an ad-hoc question relating to the amount of parental involvement with early childcare. Parents' response times were slowed in the presence of infant versus adult faces. Parents whose mother was perceived as more sensitively accepting were more engaged by infant cues. By considering the amount of early parental involvement, the sex of parents did not significantly interact with the type of face. These findings provide new insights on the attention process in response to infant cues in parents and suggest that the investigation of experience-based factors may shed further light on this topic.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Micol Gemignani
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Corso Bettini 84, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
| | - Michele Giannotti
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Corso Bettini 84, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
| | - Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, 80336 Munich, Germany
| | - Paola Rigo
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy
| | - Simona De Falco
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Corso Bettini 84, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Schmalz X, Mulatti C, Schulte-Körne G, Moll K. Effects of complexity and unpredictability on the learning of an artificial orthography. Cortex 2022; 152:1-20. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.03.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/04/2022] [Revised: 03/23/2022] [Accepted: 03/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
|
4
|
Abstract
The use of Bayes factors is becoming increasingly common in psychological sciences. Thus, it is important that researchers understand the logic behind the Bayes factor in order to correctly interpret it, and the strengths of weaknesses of the Bayesian approach. As education for psychological scientists focuses on frequentist statistics, resources are needed for researchers and students who want to learn more about this alternative approach. The aim of the current article is to provide such an overview to a psychological researcher. We cover the general logic behind Bayesian statistics, explain how the Bayes factor is calculated, how to set the priors in popular software packages to reflect the prior beliefs of the researcher, and finally provide a set of recommendations and caveats for interpreting Bayes factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy
| | | | - Lei Zhang
- Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
De Simone E, Beyersmann E, Mulatti C, Mirault J, Schmalz X. Order among chaos: Cross-linguistic differences and developmental trajectories in pseudoword reading aloud using pronunciation Entropy. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0251629. [PMID: 34010357 PMCID: PMC8133407 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251629] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2020] [Accepted: 04/30/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
In this work we propose the use of Entropy to measure variability in pronunciations in pseudowords reading aloud: pseudowords where participants give many different pronunciations receive higher Entropy values. Monolingual adults, monolingual children, and bilingual children proficient in different European languages varying in orthographic depth were tested. We predicted that Entropy values will increase with increasing orthographic depth. Moreover, higher Entropy was expected for younger than older children, as reading experience improves the knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). We also tested if interference from a second language would lead to higher Entropy. Results show that orthographic depth affects Entropy, but only when the items are not strictly matched across languages. We also found that Entropy decreases across age, suggesting that GPC knowledge becomes refined throughout grades 2-4. We found no differences between bilingual and monolingual children. Our results indicate that item characteristics play a fundamental role in pseudoword pronunciation variability, that reading experience is associated with reduced variability in responses, and that in bilinguals' knowledge of a second orthography does not seem to interfere with pseudoword reading aloud.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Elisabetta De Simone
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany
- * E-mail:
| | - Elisabeth Beyersmann
- Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University Centre of Reading, Sydney, Australia
| | - Claudio Mulatti
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Università degli studi di Trento, Trento, Italy
| | - Jonathan Mirault
- Aix-Marseille University and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France
| | - Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Schmalz X, Schulte-Körne G, de Simone E, Moll K. What Do Artificial Orthography Learning Tasks Actually Measure? Correlations Within and Across Tasks. J Cogn 2021; 4:7. [PMID: 33511326 PMCID: PMC7805385 DOI: 10.5334/joc.144] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2019] [Accepted: 12/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Artificial Orthography Learning (AOL) may act as a possible candidate to model the learning of print-to-speech correspondences. In order to serve as an adequate task, however, we need to establish whether AOL can be reliably measured. In the current study, we report the correlations between the learning of two different artificial orthographies by the same 55 participants. We also explore the correlation between AOL skill and other participant-level variables, namely Paired Associate Learning (PAL) performance, word and nonword reading ability, and age. We find high correlations between learning of two different artificial orthographies. Correlations with reading fluency and PAL are low. These results leave questions about the link between reading acquisition and AOL. At the same time, they show that AOL ability can be reliably measured and justify its use for future studies.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany
| | - Gerd Schulte-Körne
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany
| | - Elisabetta de Simone
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany
| | - Kristina Moll
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Schmalz X, Robidoux S, Castles A, Marinus E. Variations in the use of simple and context-sensitive grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English and German developing readers. Ann Dyslexia 2020; 70:180-199. [PMID: 31955322 PMCID: PMC7403165 DOI: 10.1007/s11881-019-00189-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/04/2019] [Accepted: 12/27/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Learning to read in most alphabetic orthographies requires not only the acquisition of simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) but also the acquisition of context-sensitive GPCs, where surrounding letters change a grapheme's pronunciation. We aimed to explore the use and development of simple GPCs (e.g. a ➔ /æ/) and context-sensitive GPCs (e.g. [w]a ➔ /ɔ/, as in "swan" or a[l][d] ➔ /o:/, as in "bald") in pseudoword reading. Across three experiments, English- and German-speaking children in grades 2-4 read aloud pseudowords, where vowel graphemes had different pronunciations according to different contexts (e.g. "hact", "wact", "hald"). First, we found that children use context-sensitive GPCs from grade 2 onwards, even when they are not explicitly taught. Second, we used a mathematical optimisation procedure to assess whether children's vowel responses can be described by assuming that they rely on a mix of simple and context-sensitive GPCs. While the approach works well for German adults (Schmalz et al. in Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 831-852, 2014), we found poor model fits for both German- and English-speaking children. Additional analyses using an entropy measure and data from a third experiment showed that children's pseudoword reading responses are variable and likely affected by random noise. We found a decrease in entropy across grade and reading ability across all conditions in both languages. This suggests that GPC knowledge becomes increasingly refined across grades 2-4.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany.
- Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
| | - Serje Robidoux
- Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
- Macquarie University Centre for Reading (MQCR), Sydney, Australia
| | - Anne Castles
- Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
- Macquarie University Centre for Reading (MQCR), Sydney, Australia
| | - Eva Marinus
- Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
- Pädagogische Hochschule Schwyz, Goldau, Switzerland
| |
Collapse
|
8
|
Abstract
Word reading partly depends on the activation of sublexical letter clusters. Previous research has studied which types of letter clusters have psychological saliency, but less is known about cognitive mechanisms of letter string parsing. Here, we take advantage of the high degree of context-dependency of the Russian orthography to examine whether consonant–vowel (CV) clusters are treated as units in two stages of sublexical processing. In two experiments using a nonword reading task, we use two orthogonal manipulations: (a) insertion of a visual disruptor (#) to assess whether CV clusters are kept intact during the early visual parsing stage, and (b) presence of context-dependent grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs; e.g., л[а] → /l/; л[я] → /lj/), to assess whether CV clusters remain intact or are split during the print-to-speech conversion stage. The results suggest that although CV clusters are initially processed as perceptual units in the early visual parsing stage, letters and not CV clusters drive print-to-speech conversion.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Alexander Porshnev
- General and Strategic Management Department, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
| | - Eva Marinus
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| |
Collapse
|
9
|
Abstract
The existing literature on developmental dyslexia (hereafter: dyslexia) often focuses on isolating cognitive skills which differ across dyslexic and control participants. Among potential correlates, previous research has studied group differences between dyslexic and control participants in performance on statistical learning tasks. A statistical learning deficit has been proposed to be a potential cause and/or a marker effect for early detection of dyslexia. It is therefore of practical importance to evaluate the evidence for a group difference. From a theoretical perspective, such a group difference would provide information about the causal chain from statistical learning to reading acquisition. We provide a systematic review of the literature on such a group difference. We conclude that there is insufficient high-quality data to draw conclusions about the presence or absence of an effect.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia 15, 35131, Padova, Italy.
| | - Gianmarco Altoè
- Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia 15, 35131, Padova, Italy
| | - Claudio Mulatti
- Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia 15, 35131, Padova, Italy
| |
Collapse
|
10
|
Schmalz X, Robidoux S, Castles A, Coltheart M, Marinus E. German and English Bodies: No Evidence for Cross-Linguistic Differences in Preferred Orthographic Grain Size. Collabra: Psychology 2017. [DOI: 10.1525/collabra.72] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Previous studies have found that words and nonwords with many body neighbours (i.e., words with the same orthographic body, e.g., cat, brat, at) are read faster than items with fewer body neighbours. This body-N effect has been explored in the context of cross-linguistic differences in reading where it has been reported that the size of the effect differs as a function of orthographic depth: readers of English, a deep orthography, show stronger facilitation than readers of German, a shallow orthography. Such findings support the psycholinguistic grain size theory, which proposes that readers of English rely on large orthographic units to reduce ambiguity of print-to-speech correspondences in their orthography. Here we re-examine the evidence for this pattern and find that there is no reliable evidence for such a cross-linguistic difference. Re-analysis of a key study (Ziegler et al., 2001), analysis of data from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007), and a large-scale analysis of nine new experiments all support this conclusion. Using Bayesian analysis techniques, we find little evidence of the body-N effect in most tasks and conditions. Where we do find evidence for a body-N effect (lexical decision for nonwords), we find evidence against an interaction with language.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, AU
- Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova, IT
| | - Serje Robidoux
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, AU
| | - Anne Castles
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, AU
| | - Max Coltheart
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, AU
| | - Eva Marinus
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, AU
| |
Collapse
|
11
|
Schmalz X, Beyersmann E, Cavalli E, Marinus E. Unpredictability and complexity of print-to-speech correspondences increase reliance on lexical processes: more evidence for the orthographic depth hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 2016. [DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2016.1182172] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
|
12
|
Schmalz X, Treccani B, Mulatti C. Distinguishing Target From Distractor in Stroop, Picture-Word, and Word-Word Interference Tasks. Front Psychol 2015; 6:1858. [PMID: 26696927 PMCID: PMC4678191 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01858] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2015] [Accepted: 11/16/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Lexical selection-both during reading aloud and speech production-involves selecting an intended word, while ignoring irrelevant lexical activation. This process has been studied by the use of interference tasks. Examples are the Stroop task, where participants ignore the written color word and name the color of the ink, picture-word interference tasks, where participants name a picture while ignoring a super-imposed written word, or word-word interference (WWI) tasks, where two words are presented and the participants need to respond to only one, based on an pre-determined visual feature (e.g., color, position). Here, we focus on the WWI task: it is theoretically impossible for existing models to explain how the cognitive system can respond to one stimulus and block the other, when they are presented by the same modality (i.e., they are both words). We describe a solution that can explain performance on the WWI task: drawing on the literature on visual attention, we propose that the system creates an object file for each perceived object, which is continuously updated with increasingly complete information about the stimulus, such as the task-relevant visual feature. Such a model can account for performance on all three tasks.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova , Padova, Italy ; ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University , Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Barbara Treccani
- Dipartimento di Storia, Scienze dell'Uomo e della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Sassari , Sassari, Italy
| | - Claudio Mulatti
- Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova , Padova, Italy
| |
Collapse
|
13
|
Schmalz X, Marinus E, Robidoux S, Palethorpe S, Castles A, Coltheart M. Quantifying the reliance on different sublexical correspondences in German and English. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 2014. [DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2014.968161] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
|
14
|
Schmalz X, Marinus E, Castles A. Phonological decoding or direct access? Regularity effects in lexical decisions of Grade 3 and 4 children. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2012; 66:338-46. [PMID: 22905801 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2012.711843] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
Abstract
Learning to read fluently involves moving from an effortful phonological decoding strategy to automatic recognition of familiar words. However, little is known about the timing of this transition, or the extent to which children continue to be influenced by phonological factors when recognizing words even as they progress in reading. We explored this question by examining regularity effects in a lexical decision task, as opposed to the more traditionally used reading-aloud task. Children in Grades 3 and 4 made go/no-go lexical decisions on high- and low-frequency regular and irregular words that had been matched for consistency. The children showed regularity effects in their accuracy for low-frequency words, indicating that they were using phonological decoding strategies to recognize unfamiliar words. The size of this effect was correlated with measures of reading ability. However, we found no regularity effects on accuracy for high-frequency words or on response times for either word type, suggesting that even 8-year-old children are already relying predominantly on a direct lexical strategy in their silent reading of familiar words.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Xenia Schmalz
- Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
| | | | | |
Collapse
|