Language comprehension: Reading

Eye Movements During Reading

What are fixations and saccades in reading?

• Fixation: The period when the eye is immobile; visual information is taken in during fixations.

• Saccade: A rapid jump of the eye to the next fixation point; no visual information is taken in during the saccade.

  • Forward saccades: movement to new text

  • Regressive saccades: backward movement to re-read text

Eye Movements During Reading

How do skilled readers differ from less skilled readers in eye movement patterns?

• Saccade size: Skilled readers make larger forward saccades (more information per fixation).

• Number of regressions: Skilled readers make fewer regressions (more efficient first-pass processing).

• Fixation duration: Skilled readers have shorter fixation durations (less time to process each point).

Theories of Word Recognition – Direct Access

What is the direct access hypothesis of word recognition?

Readers can access the meaning of a word directly from its visual spelling pattern, without needing to translate it into sound first.
Mechanism: Spelling analysis (visual pattern) → Semantic analysis.

Theories of Word Recognition – Direct Access

What evidence did Barron & Baron (1977) provide for direct access?

Method: Semantic judgment task (e.g., "does the word correspond to a type of plant?") under normal conditions vs. verbal suppression (repeating "double, double").
Result: Reaction times for "yes" responses were the same under both conditions.
Conclusion: Even when the phonological system was occupied, participants could still make semantic judgments → supports direct access.

Indirect Access Hypothesis (Phonologically Mediated)

What is the indirect access hypothesis?

The primary route to meaning is through sound. The visual pattern must first be converted into a phonological code, which then activates meaning.
Mechanism: Spelling analysis → Sound analysis → Semantic analysis.

Indirect Access Hypothesis (Phonologically Mediated)

What did Van Orden (1992) find using a category decision task?

Method: Participants saw a category (e.g., "FOOD") then a target word.
Result: Slower and more error-prone saying "no" to pseudo-members (e.g., "meet") than to control words (e.g., "meek").
Conclusion: "Meet" sounds like "meat" (food), so phonology caused interference, forcing double-checking of spelling → supports indirect route.

Indirect Access Hypothesis (Phonologically Mediated)

What did Corcoran (1966) find using a letter-cancellation task?

Method: Participants crossed out the letter 'e' in text.
Result: They missed more silent 'e's (e.g., in "gate," "lose") than pronounced 'e's (e.g., in "he," "set").
Conclusion: Silent 'e's are processed less because they are not part of the word's phonological representation → supports phonological coding as core to reading.

Indirect Access Hypothesis (Phonologically Mediated)

What is the pseudohomophone effect? What did Rubenstein et al. (1971) find?

Pseudohomophone effect: Pseudohomophones (e.g., "PHOCKS") are harder to reject as nonwords than regular nonwords (e.g., "SNOCKS") because they sound like real words.

Rubenstein et al. (1971) – Lexical decision task: Slower and more error-prone rejecting pseudohomophones than regular nonwords. Phonological activation momentarily tricks the lexical decision system → supports indirect route.

Indirect Access Hypothesis (Phonologically Mediated)

What did Luo et al. (1998) find using a semantic relatedness judgment task?

Method: Participants judged whether two words were semantically related.
Result: More likely to mistakenly judge "LION-BARE" as related than "LION-BEAN."
Conclusion: The homophone "bare" (sounds like "bear") activated the semantic feature of an animal, causing a false positive → supports indirect route.

Dual-Route Hypothesis (Compromise)

What is the dual-route hypothesis of word recognition?

Both direct and indirect routes are available and operate in parallel. The reader uses whichever route is most efficient based on word type and skill level.

• Direct/Lexical route: Visual analysis → Orthographic lexicon → Semantic analysis

• Indirect/Sublexical route: Visual analysis → Grapheme-phoneme conversion → Phonological lexicon → Semantic analysis

Dual-Route Hypothesis (Compromise)

When is the direct route used? When is the indirect route used?

Direct route used for:

• Familiar, irregular words (e.g., "yacht," "colonel") – indirect route would lead to mispronunciation

• Skilled, fluent readers

Indirect route used for:

• Novel or unfamiliar words (e.g., "chthonic")

• Regular words (e.g., "cat," "jump")

• Beginning readers (to "crack the code")

Stages of Learning to Read (Ehri, 1992)

What are Ehri's three stages of learning to read? Give the age/onset and key process for each.

1. Logographic stage (preschoolers): Read by recognizing visual cues (e.g., "two humps" in "camel"); no letter-sound relationships.

2. Alphabetic stage (grade 1 and onwards): Learn grapheme-phoneme correspondences; sound out words.

3. Sight word reading (onset varies): Words become recognized as units; fluent, automatic, relies on direct route.

Stages of Learning to Read (Ehri, 1992)

What evidence supports the logographic stage? (Masonheimer et al., 1984)

Pepsi study: Children could still read "Pepsi" even when letters were changed, as long as the logo's overall visual configuration was intact. They relied on non-phonetic visual cues.

Stages of Learning to Read (Ehri, 1992)

What evidence supports the alphabetic stage? (Ehri & Wilce, 1985)

Method: Compared children who knew few letter sounds (logographic) vs. most letter sounds (alphabetic). Given visually distinct words (e.g., "bark" vs. "park") or phonetically distinct words (e.g., "bark" vs. "dark").

Result: Alphabetic readers better at phonetically distinct words; logographic readers better at visually distinct words.

Conclusion: Dissociation – logographic readers rely on visual cues; alphabetic readers rely on phonetic cues.

Stages of Learning to Read (Ehri, 1992)

What evidence supports the sight word reading stage? (Ehri & Wilce, 1983)

Method: Participants identified digits (1,2,3), familiar words, and unfamiliar words.

Result: Identification times were equally fast for digits and familiar words – both faster than unfamiliar words.

Conclusion: With experience, common words become "sight words," processed as automatically as symbolic digits, bypassing sequential decoding.

Approaches to Teaching Reading

What are the whole word and phonics approaches to teaching reading? Which theories do they align with?

• Whole word approach: Memorizes visual shape of entire words; aligns with direct access hypothesis. Effective for high-frequency irregular words but leaves children unable to decode new words.

• Phonics approach: Teaches systematic letter-sound relationships (grapheme-phoneme correspondences); aligns with indirect access hypothesis. Requires phonemic awareness (ability to identify/manipulate sounds in spoken words).

Approaches to Teaching Reading

What is the whole language approach to teaching reading?

Emphasizes that reading is a "psycholinguistic guessing game." Focuses on learning to read through immersion in authentic literature, using context and semantic cues to guess unknown words, rather than explicit phonics instruction.

Approaches to Teaching Reading

What are three key phonemic awareness tasks? Give examples.

1. Counting tasks: "How many sounds are in 'cat'?" (/k/ /a/ /t/ → three)

2. Comparison tasks: "Does 'ball' start with the same sound as 'boy'?"

3. Deletion tasks: "Say 'steak.' Now say it without the /s/." (Answer: "teak")

Developmental Dyslexia

What is developmental dyslexia? What is the misconception and the current view?

Definition: Serious problems learning to read and write despite normal intelligence and adequate instruction.

Misconception: Caused by seeing letters backwards (e.g., "saw" for "was") – not strongly supported; common in early typical readers.

Current view (Phonological Deficit Hypothesis): Core deficit in phonological processing and use of the indirect route. Difficulty with phonemic awareness, rapid naming, and verbal short-term memory. Cannot build robust "sight words" – reading remains slow, effortful, and inaccurate.