Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T04:19:35.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children's orthographic representations and linguistic transparency: Nonsense word reading in English, French, and Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Usha Goswami ,
Jean Emile Gombert  and
Lucia Fraca de Barrera
Usha Goswami*
Affiliation:
University CollegeLondon
Jean Emile Gombert
Affiliation:
University of Burgundy, LEAD-CNRS, Dijon
Lucia Fraca de Barrera
Affiliation:
Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador, Caracas
*
Behavioural Sciences Unit, Institute or Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WCIN 1EH. United Kingdom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to compare the development of orthographic representations in children learning to read English, French, or Spanish. Nonsense words that shared both orthography and phonology at the level of the rhyme with real words (cake-dake, comic-bomic), phonology only (cake-daik, comic-bommick), or neither (faish, ricop) were created for each orthography. Experiment I compared English and French children's reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme orthography with real words (dake) with those that did not (daik). Significant facilitation was found for shared rhymes in English, with reduced effects in French. Experiment 2 compared English and French children's reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme phonology with real words (daik) with those that did not (faish). Significant facilitation for shared rhyme phonology was found in both languages. Experiment 3 compared English, French, and Spanish children's reading of nonsense words (dake vs. faish) and found a significant facilitatory effect of orthographic and phonological familiarity for each language. The size of the familiarity effect, however, was much greater in the less transparent orthographies (English and French). These results are interpreted in terms of the level of phonology that is represented in the orthographic recognition units being developed by children who are learning to read more and less transparent orthographies.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1998 , pp. 19 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andrews, S. (1982). Phonological recoding: Is the regularity effect consistent? Memory and Cognition, 10. 565–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, S. (1989). Frequency and neighbourhood effects on lexical access: Activation or search? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 15, 802–814.Google Scholar
Besner, D., & Davelaar, E. (1983). Seudohomofoan effects in visual word recognition: Evidence for phonological processing. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 37, 300–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowey, J. A. (1990). Orthographic onsets and rimes as functional units of reading. Memory and Cognition, 18, 419–427.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowey, J. A. (1993). Orthographic rime priming. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40(A), 247–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowey, J. A. (1996). Phonological recoding of nonword orthographic rime primes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 117–131.Google Scholar
Bowey, J. A., & Hansen, J. (1994). The development of orthographic rimes as units of word recognition. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 58, 465–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read: A causal connection. Nature, 310, 419–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, S., Fowler, A., & Gipstein, M. (1995). Questioning the role of syllables and rimes in early phonological awareness. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Brown, G. D. A. (1987). Resolving inconsistency: A computational model of word naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, G. D. A., & Ellis, N. C. (1994). Issues in spelling research: An overview. In Brown, G. D. A. & Ellis, N. C. (Eds.), Handbook of spelling: Theory, process and intervention (pp. 3–25). Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Brown, G. D. A., & Watson, F. L. (1994). Spelling-to-sound effects in single word reading. British Journal of Psychology, 85, 181–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruck, M., & Treiman, R. (1992). Learning to pronounce words: The limitations of analogies. Reading Research Quarterly, 27, 374–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caravolas, M., & Bruck, M. (1993). The effect of oral and written language input on children's phonological awareness: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 55, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreiras, M., Alvarez, C. J., & de Vega, M. (1993). Syllable frequency and visual word recognition in Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 766–780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coltheart, M., Davelaar, E., Jonasson, J. T., & Besner, D. (1977). Access to the internal lexicon. In Domic, S. (Ed.), Attention and performance VI. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Coltheart, V., & Leahy, J. (1992). Children's and adults's reading of nonwords: Effects of regularity and consistency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 18, 718–729.Google Scholar
Cossu, G., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, I. Y., Katz, L., & Tola, G. (1987). Awareness of phonological segments and reading ability in Italian children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, S. (1989). On a non-argument for the rhyme. Journal of Linguistics, 25, 211–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehri, L. C. (1992). Reconceptualising sight word reading. In Gough, P. B., Ehri, L. C., & Treiman, R. (Eds.)., Reading acquisition (pp. 107–143). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ehri, L. C., & Robbins, C. (1992). Beginners need some decoding skill to read words by analogy. Reading Research Quarterly, 27, 12–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frauenfelder, U. H., Baayen, R. H., Hellwig, F. M., & Schreuder, R. (1993). Neighbourhood density and frequency across languages and modalities. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 781–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, R., & Katz, L. (1982). Orthography, phonology, morphology and meaning. North Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers.Google Scholar
Gombert, J. E. (1992). Metalinguistic Development. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Goswami, U. (1986). Children's use of analogy in learning to read: A developmental study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 73–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U. (1988). Orthographic analogies and reading development. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psy-chology, 40(A), 239–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U. (1991). Learning about spelling sequences: The role of onsets and rimes in analogies in reading. Child Development. 62, 1110–1123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U. (1993). Toward an interactive analogy model of reading development: Decoding vowel graphemes in beginning reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 443–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami, U., Porpodas, C., & Wheelwright, S. (1997). Children's orthographic representations in English and Greek. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 12, 273–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatcher, P. J., Hulme, C., & Ellis, A. W. (1994). Ameliorating early reading failure by integrating the teaching of reading and phonological skills: The phonological linkage hypothesis. Child Development, 65, 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, H. S., & Hanley, R. J. (1995). Phonological awareness and visual skills in learning to read Chinese and English. Cognition, 54, 73–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hulme, C., Snowling, M., & Quinlan, P. (1991). Connectionism and learning to read: Steps towards a psychologically plausible model. Reading and Writing, 3, 159–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, L., & Feldman, L. B. (1981). Linguistic coding in word recognition: Comparisons between a deep and a shallow orthography. In Lesgold, A. M. & Perfetti, C. A. (Eds.), Interactive processes in reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Katz, L., & Feldman, L. B. (1983). Relation between pronunciation and recognition of printed words in deep and shallow orthographies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 9,157–166.Google ScholarPubMed
Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (1996). Syllable structure and the distribution of phonemes in English syllables. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Laxon, V., Masterson, J., & Moran, R. (1994). Are children's representations of words distributed?Effects of orthographic neighbourhood size, consistency and regularity of naming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laxon, V., Masterson, J., Pool, J., & Keating, C. (1992). Nonword naming: Further exploration of the pseudohomophone effect in terms of orthographic neighbourhood size, grapheme changes, spelling-sound consistency, and reader accuracy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 18, 730–748.Google ScholarPubMed
Lundberg, I., Olofsson, A., &Wall., S.. (1980). Reading and spelling skills in the first school years predicted from phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten. Scandanavian Journal of Psychology, 21, 159–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, V. A. (1986). Phonological awareness: The role of early reading experience. Cognition, 24,65–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muter, V., Snowling, M., & Taylor, S. (1994). Orthographic analogies and phonological awareness:Their role and significance in early reading development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35, 293–310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naslund, J. C., & Schneider, W. (1991). Longitudinal effects of verbal ability, memory capacity and phonological awareness on reading performance. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 6, 375–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naslund, J. C.. Schneider, W., & van den Broek, P. (in press). Beginning reading in Germany and the U.S.: A comparison of phonological segmentation, decoding, lexical access and comprehension. In Hulme, C. & Joshi, R. M. (Eds.), Reading and spelling: Development and disorder. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Peereman, R., & Content, A. (1996). Orthographic and phonological neighbourhoods in naming:Not all neighbors are as mighty in orthographic space. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. (1992). The representation problem in reading acquisition. In Gough, P. B., Ehri, L. C., Treiman, R. (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 145–174). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. E. (1994). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Porpodas, C. (1993). The relation between phonemic awareness and reading and spelling of Greek words in the first school years. In Carretero, M., Pope, M., Simons, R. J., & Pozo, J. I. (Eds.), Learning and instruction (Vol. 3, pp. 203–217). Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., & Naslund, J. C. (in press). The impact of early phonological processing skills on reading and spelling in school: Evidence from the Munich Longitudinal Study. In Weinert, F. E. & Schneider, W. (Eds.), Individual development from 3 to 12: Findings from the Munich Longitudinal Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sebastien-Galles, N. (1991). Reading by analogy in a shallow orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 471–477.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523–568.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Signorini, A. (in press). Word reading in Spanish: A comparison between skilled and less skilled beginning readers. Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics, 18, 319–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Feeman, D. J. (1984). Intelligence, cognitive skills and early reading progress. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 278–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, M., & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in a sequence of stages? Cognition, 30,139–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taraban, R., & McClelland, J. L. (1987). Conspiracy effects in word pronunciation. Journal of Memory and Language, 26. 608–631.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thorstad, G. (1991). The effect of orthography in the acquisition of literacy skills. British Journal of Psychology, 82, 527–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R. (1994). To what extent do orthographic units in print mirror phonological units in speech? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 23, 91–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treiman, R., & Chafetz, J. (1987). Are there onset-and rime-like units in printed words? In Coltheart, M. (Ed.), Attention and performance XII (pp. 281–298). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Treiman, R., Fowler, C. A., Gross, J., Berch, D., & Welherston, S. (1995). Syllable structure or word structure? Evidence for onset and rime units with disyllabic and trisyllabic stimuli. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 132–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R., Goswami, U., & Bruck, M. (1990). Not all nonwords are alike: Implications for reading development and theory. Memory and Cognition, 18, 559–567.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treiman, R., Mullennix, J., Bijeljac-Babic, R., & Richmond-Welty, E. D. (1995). The special role of rimes in the description, use and acquisition of English orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 107–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wimmer, H. (1995). From the perspective of a more regular orthography. Issues in Education, I,101–104.Google Scholar
Wimmer, H., & Frith, U. (1993). Orthographies and learning to read: An English-German comparison. Unpublished manuscript. University of Salzburg.Google Scholar
Wimmer, H., & Goswami, U. (1994). The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: Word recognition in English and German children. Cognition, 51, 91–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wimmer, H., Landerl, K., Linortner, R., & Hummer, P.. (1991). The relationship of phonemic awareness to reading acquisition: More consequence than precondition but still important. Cognition, 40, 219–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wimmer, H., Landed, K., & Schneider, W. (1994). The role of rhyme awareness in learning to read a regular orthography. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 12. 469–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, B.W., Olson, D. K., & Treiman, R. (1990). Subsyllabic units as aids in beginning readers' word learning: Onset-rime versus post-vowel segmentation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 49, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar