Horizontal orthography versus vertical orthography: The effects of writing direction and syllabic format on visual word recognition in Korean Hangul.

The Korean writing system has the flexibility of writing horizontally and vertically as well as two syllabic formats that cannot be found in any other alphabetic script. Consolidating these two characteristics, this study investigated the differential extractions of visual information from the mutilated stimuli of the two syllabic formats of CVC syllables and two writing directions using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the two syllabic formats (i.e., balanced syllables, [Formula: see text] and vertical syllables, [Formula: see text]) were mutilated downwards and upwards (i.e., [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] respectively), along with whole stimuli, in horizontal writing direction. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli and syllabic formats were mutilated rightwards and leftwards (i.e., [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] respectively) in vertical writing direction. Linear mixed effects models showed significant syllabic format effects and writing direction effects, indicating an upper-part superiority in horizontal writing and a right-part advantage in vertical writing. In particular, the right-part superiority in vertical writing is different from a left-part advantage found in Chinese characters. While the upper-part superiority is script-universal, the leftward or rightward bias seems to be script-specific, as readers' perceptual integration depends on the nature of orthography.

Speech perception in a second language: Hearing is believing-seeing is not.

This study examined the effects of the speaker's face and accent on second language (L2) speech perception. Forty-two Chinese speakers of English immersed in the L2 environment were instructed to perform a cross-modal semantic judgement task. They saw an Asian or Caucasian face on the screen and heard word pairs in L2 in a native English accent or a Chinese accent, and were asked to judge whether the word pairs were related to each other in meaning or not. Results showed that for words presented in the native accent, there was a semantic effect in both reaction time and accuracy, irrespective of the face shown. For words presented in the non-native accent, the RT data showed a semantic effect, whereas the accuracy revealed a reversed semantic effect. The speed-accuracy trade-off suggests a relatively weak semantic effect. These patterns were not modulated by the faces accompanying the word pairs. These results suggest that the cue of accent plays an important role during bilinguals' speech perception in L2, such that non-native accent hampers speech perception, even when it matches bilinguals' first language. In contrast, bilinguals do not seem to depend on the social indexical cue of the face when it is not reliable. The present findings hold implications for the Bilingual Model of Lexical Access (BIMOLA) of bilingual speech perception and the monolingual models of social speech perception.

Inter-character Orthographic Similarity Effects on the Recognition of Chinese Coordinative Compound Words.

Chinese coordinative compound words are common and unique in inter-character semantic and orthographic relationships. This study explored the inter-character orthographic similarity effects on the recognition of transparent two-morpheme coordinative compound words. Seventy-two native Chinese readers participated in a lexical decision task. The findings demonstrated robust inhibitory inter-character orthographic similarity effects, intra-word character reversal effects, and inter-character semantic similarity effects. These results were compared to those of previous studies on coordinative compound word recognition and on the orthographic similarity phenomenon at both character and word levels. The findings were explained with the multi-level representational model of morphological processing of Chinese compound words (Zhou and Marslen-Wilson in Psychologia 43:47-66, 2000). The model was further extended by adding the activation of morpho-orthographic relationships and the mapping of morphemic orthographic information onto the semantic information of both morphemes and whole words.

Stroop interference associated with efficient reading fluency and prelexical orthographic processing.

The Stroop Color-Word Test involves a dynamic interplay between reading and executive functioning that elicits intuitions of word reading automaticity. One such intuition is that strong reading skills (i.e., more automatized word reading) play a disruptive role within the test, contributing to Stroop interference. However, evidence has accumulated that challenges this intuition. The present study examined associations among Stroop interference, reading skills (i.e., isolated word identification, grapheme-to-phoneme mapping, phonemic awareness, reading fluency) measured on standardized tests, and orthographic skills measured on experimental computerized tasks. Among university students (N = 152), correlational analyses showed greater Stroop interference to be associated with (a) relatively low scores on all standardized reading tests, and (b) longer response latencies on orthographic tasks. Hierarchical regression demonstrated that reading fluency and prelexical orthographic processing predicted unique and significant variance in Stroop interference beyond baseline rapid naming. Results suggest that strong reading skills, including orthographic processing, play a supportive role in resolving Stroop interference.

The resolution of visual noise in word recognition.

This study examined lexical processing in English by native speakers of Korean and Chinese, compared to that of native speakers of English, using normal, alternated, and inverse fonts. Sixty four adult students participated in a lexical decision task. The findings demonstrated similarities and differences in accuracy and latency among the three L1 groups. The participants, regardless of L1, had a greater advantage in nonwords than words for the normal fonts because they were able to efficiently detect the illegal letter strings. However, word advantages were observed in the visually distorted stimuli (i.e., alternated and inverse fonts). These results were explained from the perspectives of the theory of psycholinguistic grain size, L1-L2 distance, and the mechanism of familiarity discrimination. The native speakers of Chinese were more sensitive to visual distortions than the Korean counterpart, suggesting that the linguistic template established in L1 might play a role in word processing in English.

The Relationship Between Expressive Vocabulary Knowledge and Reading Skills for Adult Struggling Readers.

This study examined expressive vocabulary and its relationship to reading skills for 232 native English-speaking adults who read between the third- and fifth-grade levels. The Boston Naming Test (BNT; Kaplan, Goodglass, & Weintraub, 2001) was used to measure expressive vocabulary. Participants scored lower than the normative sample of adults on all aspects of the test; they had fewer spontaneously correct answers, and were not helped by stimulus or phonemic cues. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that expressive vocabulary accounted for significant variance in both reading comprehension and exception word reading, but not for general word reading or nonword reading.

Animacy effect and language specificity: judgment of unaccusative verbs by Korean learners of English as a foreign language.

This study investigated the tendency of overpassivization of unaccusative verbs by Korean learners of English as a foreign language (FL). Sixty Korean native college students participated in the study, along with 17 English-speaking counterparts serving as a comparison group. Consistent with the findings of previous research, this study found Korean students' tendency to incorrectly accept passive-voice with inanimate subjects. The results of this study highlighted the role of lexical animacy, the hierarchy of agentivity, and language-specific effects on FL judgment. The findings of this study suggest a robust language-specific L1 effect on L2 acquisition and a greater involvement of cognition in FL use than language input.

Construct Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III Form A in the Performance of Struggling Adult Readers: Rasch Modeling.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to apply the Rasch model to an analysis of the psychometric properties of the PPVT-III Form A items with struggling adult readers. METHODS: The PPVT-IIIA was administered to 229 African-American adults whose isolated word reading skills were between third and fifth grades. Conformity of the adults' performance on the PPVT-III items was evaluated using the Winsteps software. RESULTS: Analysis of all PPVT-IIIA items combined did not fully support its use as a useful measure of receptive vocabulary for struggling adult readers who were African Americans. To achieve an adequate model fit, items 73 through item 156 were analyzed. The items analyzed showed adequate internal consistency reliability, unidimensionality, and freedom from differential item functioning for ability, gender, and age, with a minor modification. DISCUSSION: With an appropriate treatment of misfit items, the results supported the measurement properties, internal consistency reliability, unidimensionality of the PPVT-IIIA items, and measurement invariance of the test across subgroups of ability, age, and gender.

A randomized control study of instructional approaches for struggling adult readers.

This study measured the effectiveness of various instructional approaches on the reading outcomes of 198 adults who read single words at the 3.0 through 5.9 grade equivalency levels. The students were randomly assigned to one of the following interventions: Decoding and Fluency; Decoding, Comprehension, and Fluency; Decoding, Comprehension, Fluency, and Extensive Reading; Extensive Reading; and a Control/Comparison approach. The Control/Comparison approach employed a curriculum common to community-based adult literacy programs, and the Extensive Reading approach focused on wide exposure to literature. The Fluency component was a guided repeated oral reading approach, and the Decoding/Comprehension components were SRA/McGraw-Hill Direct Instruction Corrective Reading Programs. Results indicated continued weaknesses in and poor integration of participants' skills. Although students made significant gains independent of reading instruction group, all improvements were associated with small effect sizes. When reading instruction group was considered, only one significant finding was detected, with the Comparison/Control group, the Decoding and Fluency group, and the Decoding, Comprehension, Extensive Reading and Fluency group showing stronger word attack outcomes than the Extensive Reading group.

Measuring adult literacy students' reading skills using the Gray Oral Reading Test.

There are not enough reading tests standardized on adults who have very low literacy skills, and therefore tests standardized on children are frequently administered. This study addressed the complexities and problems of using a test normed on children to measure the reading comprehension skills of 193 adults who read at approximately third through fifth grade reading grade equivalency levels. Findings are reported from an analysis of the administration of Form A of the Gray Oral Reading Tests-Fourth Edition (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001a, b). Results indicated that educators and researchers should be very cautious when interpreting test results of adults who have difficulty reading when children's norm-referenced tests are administered.

Phonological Awareness and Rapid Naming Skills of Children with Reading Disabilities and Children with Reading Disabilities Who Are At Risk for Mathematics Difficulties.

Limited research has examined the skills of children with a reading disability (RD) and children with RD and a mathematics disability (MD). Even less research has examined the phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in these two groups of children and how these skills relate to reading and math achievement. Additionally, various classification criteria are frequently implemented to classify children with MD. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the PA and RAN skills in children who met different criteria for RD only and children with RD who are at-risk for mathematics difficulties (MDR). Participants were 114 second or third grade students with RD from public elementary schools in three large metropolitan areas. Students were classified as at-risk for mathematics difficulties utilizing a 25th percentile cutoff and a 15th percentile cutoff as assessed by the KeyMath-Revised Test (Connolly, 1988). A series of PA and RAN measures were administered along with a range of reading and mathematics measures. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that children with RD only evidenced a different pattern of results compared to children with RD + MDR. Additionally, using a more stringent criterion to classify children at-risk for mathematics difficulties resulted in a differential pattern of results when compared to a less stringent classification criterion.

The woodcock reading mastery test: impact of normative changes.

This study examined the magnitude of differences in standard scores, convergent validity, and concurrent validity when an individual's performance was gauged using the revised and the normative update (Woodcock, 1998) editions of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test in which the actual test items remained identical but norms have been updated. From three metropolitan areas, 899 first to third grade students referred by their teachers for a reading intervention program participated. Results showed the inverse Flynn effect, indicating systematic inflation averaging 5 to 9 standard score points, regardless of gender, IQ, city site, or ethnicity, when calculated using the updated norms. Inflation was greater at lower raw score levels. Implications for using the updated norms for identifying children with reading disabilities and changing norms during an ongoing study are discussed.