Consolidation improves the learning of new meanings for known words but not necessarily their integration into semantic memory.

Consolidation is essential to the integration of novel words into the mental lexicon; however, its role in learning new meanings for known words remains unclear. This old-form-new-meaning learning is very common, as when one learns that "skate" is also a type of fish in addition to its familiar roller- or ice-skating meaning. To address consolidation effects for new meanings, we compared the behavioral and ERP measures on new and original meanings tested 24 hours after learning with words tested immediately after learning. Semantic judgments of both new and original meanings benefitted from the study-test interval. However, N400 amplitudes on studied words-indicators of meaning access from semantic memory-were unaffected by learning or consolidation. These results suggest that while sleep benefits memory for new meanings, the new meanings do not become integrated into the mental lexicon within that period. Instead, episodic retrieval remains functional in accessing new meanings even after 24 hours.

Bypass language en route to meaning at your peril.

The learning account of the puzzle of ideography cannot be dismissed as readily as Morin maintains, and is compatible with the standardization account. The reading difficulties of deaf and dyslexic individuals, who cannot easily form connections between written letter strings and spoken words, suggest limits to our ability to bypass speech and reliably access meaning directly from graphic symbols.

Global mapping congruence influences phonological interference: ERP evidence for early and persistent ortho-phonological effects in reading Chinese for meaning.

Phonological interference during written-word meaning judgments occurs in both Chinese and English, suggesting that word-level phonological activation is universal rather than dependent on the sublexical structures that vary with writing systems. To accommodate this universality, we distinguish two sources of phonological congruence between a meaning-bearing orthographic unit (word or character) and other units in the orthographic lexicon: (a) Global congruence between a word (or character) and its orthographic neighbors having the same pronunciation and (b) Local congruence between a word (or character) and its graphic constituents (letters or radicals). Recent evidence by Zhou and Perfetti in 2021 shows a greater role for global than local congruence in covert naming of Chinese characters. We hypothesize this is true also for meaning processing and use behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to test this hypothesis during character meaning judgments. As expected, we found word-level phonological interference in meaning decision times. Further, ERPs detected interference effects related to global congruence at early and mid-latency ERP components; local congruence effects emerged only in interaction with global congruence. A late ERP component (LPC) also showed phonological interference, but no effect on mapping congruence. These time-course results suggest two phases of phonological activation: (a) character identification, influenced mainly by global congruence, as indicated in early and mid-latency ERP components and (b) meaning comparison, influenced only by lexical phonology, as indicated by the LPC component. The early phase of lexical processing is much the same whether meaning or pronunciation is required because it engages ortho-phonological associations that are not easily suppressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A measure of individual differences in readers' approaches to text and its relation to reading experience and reading comprehension.

Readers have different motivations and approaches to text that covers a range of topics and difficulty levels. We introduce the concept of readers' approaches to text to establish a link between motivational and cognitive aspects of reading comprehension. Study 1 describes the development of a self-report measure of readers' approaches to text with a community sample. An exploratory factor analysis revealed that The Readers' Approaches to Text Questionnaire (TReAT-Q) had four subscales: (1) intrinsic goals, (2) extrinsic goals and strategies, (3) effort at understanding, and (4) avoidance of text difficulty. Aside from avoidance of text difficulty, these factors predicted adults' reading experience above and beyond the related, but more general, measure of need for cognition. A confirmatory factor analysis on TReAT-Q in Study 2 revealed that all subscales except effort at understanding contributed to a readers' approaches to text latent construct for college students. A subsequent structural equation model (SEM) evaluating a cognitive model of reading comprehension showed that college students' TReAT-Q scores predicted reading comprehension through an indirect pathway, mediated by reading experience and vocabulary knowledge. Readers who enjoy reading and deploy reading strategies to meet a desired level of understanding tend to have more reading experiences. The SEM also demonstrated the mediating role of vocabulary knowledge in text comprehension by linking reading experience and reading comprehension. Extending beyond measures of motivation, TReAT-Q incorporates the positive and negative approaches readers have to texts, which is fundamental for assessing what readers gain from their reading experiences that assists reading comprehension.

Word-to-text integration and antecedent accessibility: Eye-tracking evidence extends results of event-related potentials (ERPs).

Eye tracking and event-related potentials (ERPs) have complementary advantages in the study of reading processes. We used eye tracking to extend ERP evidence of Helder et al. (2020) that word-to-text integration at the beginnings and ends of sentences is primarily determined by local text factors (antecedents in a previous sentence) but that global factors (central theme) may make these antecedents more accessible in memory and thus facilitate their integration. The ERP evidence for these conclusions comes from the N400 on a target noun, which varied with the appearance of an antecedent in the previous sentence and whether that antecedent was related to the passage theme. Here, using the same materials, we report eye tracking evidence that reflects not only integration processes indexed by fixation on target words and words following, but also regressions to the antecedent, a measure not possible with ERPs. Interestingly, conclusions from eye-tracking measures align generally with those from Helder et al., but reading times did not consistently correspond to reduced N400s. A distinctive eye-tracking result is that when antecedents were not related to the central theme of the passage (thus less accessible in memory) there was a greater likelihood of return to the antecedent from the regions beyond the target word. These findings demonstrate an independent influence of both local and global context on reading patterns that are unique to eye-tracking measurement, thus both converging with ERP conclusions and adding new ones. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of word knowledge in error detection: a challenge to the broken error monitor account of dyslexia.

Dyslexic children often fail to correct errors while reading aloud, and dyslexic adolescents and adults exhibit lower amplitudes of the error-related negativity (ERN)-the neural response to errors-than typical readers during silent reading. Past researchers therefore suggested that dyslexia may arise from a faulty error detection mechanism that interferes with orthographic learning and text comprehension. An alternative possibility is that comprehension difficulty in dyslexics is primarily a downstream effect of low-quality lexical representations-that is, poor word knowledge. On this view, the attenuated ERN in dyslexics is a byproduct, rather than a source, of underdeveloped orthographic knowledge. Because the second view implies a direct association of the error response with comprehension skill in populations of all ability levels, the present study evaluates these alternatives through a reanalysis of behavioral and neural data from 31 typical adult readers. If it is true that faulty error processing can manifest as dyslexia, a model in which error monitoring contributes directly to comprehension should outperform a model in which it does not. ERNs recorded during spelling judgments were used as a measure of error detection aptitude in path analyses of reading comprehension. The data were better fit by a model in which error detection aptitude was a consequence of word knowledge than a model in which it contributed directly to comprehension. The findings challenge the notion that comprehension difficulty in dyslexics is attributable to error processing deficits and are consistent with the hypothesis that comprehension difficulty in dyslexics is partially attributable to low-quality word knowledge.

Development and validation of a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system.

This study developed and validated a Chinese pseudo-character/non-character producing system (CPN system) that can assist researchers in creating experimental materials using Chinese characters. Based on a large-scale dataset of 6097 characters, the CPN system provides researchers with precise Chinese orthographic information (structures and positions, radical frequency, number of strokes, number of radical-sharing neighbors, and position-based regularity) to create three types of experimental stimuli: pseudo-characters, semi non-characters, and whole non-characters. Featuring the position-based regularity of 446 radicals, the CPN system helps researchers to manipulate, or to control for, orthographic characteristics of radicals to study Chinese lexical processing. In two empirical validations for stimuli created by the system, Chinese-as-second-language learners (n = 79) and first-language users (n = 41), respectively, participated in a Chinese orthographic choice task in which participants compared two artificial characters and chose the one that more closely resembled a real Chinese character. Both validations demonstrate that highly proficient Chinese readers are better able to identify pseudo-characters, suggesting that the radical's position-based information impacts Chinese character identification to different extents. With the empirical support for the created stimuli, the system further affords researchers auto-generated outcomes with downloadable images and Excel sheets for creating customized stimuli, making material selection easy, efficient, and effective. This CPN system is the first large-scale, data-driven tool free for researchers who are interested in studies of written Chinese. CPN should benefit the field of Chinese orthographic processing, Chinese instruction, and cross-linguistic comparisons, providing a useful tool for studying Chinese lexical processing.

Consistency and regularity effects in character identification: A greater role for global than local mapping congruence.

Consistency and regularity, concepts that arise, respectively, from the connectionist and classical cognitive modeling work in alphabetic reading, are two ways to characterize the orthography-to-phonology mappings of written languages. These concepts have been applied to Chinese reading research despite important differences across writing systems, with mixed results concerning their relative importance. The present study of covert naming in Chinese is distinctive in testing the ERP effects of regularity and consistency in a fully orthogonal design. We found that consistency, but not regularity, affected the N170, P200 and N400 as well as pronunciation transcription accuracies, demonstrating a more prominent role of consistency than regularity in character naming, consistent with conclusions from English word naming. To capture a generalization across writing systems, we propose mapping congruence as a writing-system-independent way of referring to orthography-to-phonology mappings and illustrate these congruence effects in an interactive framework of character identification.

Unmasking individual differences in adult reading procedures by disrupting holistic orthographic perception.

Word identification is undeniably important for skilled reading and ultimately reading comprehension. Interestingly, both lexical and sublexical procedures can support word identification. Recent cross-linguistic comparisons have demonstrated that there are biases in orthographic coding (e.g., holistic vs. analytic) linked with differences in writing systems, such that holistic orthographic coding is correlated with lexical-level reading procedures and vice versa. The current study uses a measure of holistic visual processing used in the face processing literature, orientation sensitivity, to test individual differences in word identification within a native English population. Results revealed that greater orientation sensitivity (i.e., greater holistic processing) was associated with a reading profile that relies less on sublexical phonological measures and more on lexical-level characteristics within the skilled English readers. Parallels to Chinese procedures of reading and a proposed alternative route to skilled reading are discussed.

Character and child factors contribute to character recognition development among good and poor Chinese readers from grade 1 to 6.

In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for a cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study investigated (a) the effects of character properties (i.e., orthographic consistency and transparency) on character acquisition, and (b) the effects of individual learner differences (i.e., orthographic awareness and phonological awareness) on character recognition. Chinese native-speaking children (over N = 100 for each of grade 1 to 6) completed a lexical decision task. Crossed random effects models suggested (a) character-level orthographic and phonological effects contributed to character recognition development in an asymptotic way from grade 1 to 6, with a moderate effect at earlier ages of acquisition and a stronger facilitation after grade 3; (b) child-level effects of orthographic awareness and character-reading level contributed to all types of characters; (c) the interaction between orthographic consistency and orthographic awareness grew more pronounced among typically developing children progressively from grade 1 to grade 6; and (d) this interaction of character- and child-level factors was not significantly associated with literacy development among children with poor reading skills. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for character development among typically and nontypically developing children.

A Lifespan fMRI Study of Neurodevelopment Associated with Reading Chinese.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the neural systems involved in reading Chinese in 125 participants 6-74 years old to examine two theoretical issues: how brain structure and function are related in the context of the lifetime neural development of human cognition and whether the neural network for reading is universal or different across languages. Our findings showed that a common network of left frontal and occipital regions typically involved in reading Chinese was recruited across all participants. Crucially, activation in left mid-inferior frontal regions, fusiform and striate-extrastriate sites, premotor cortex, right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral insula, and supplementary motor area all showed linearly decreasing changes with age. These findings differ from previous findings on alphabetic reading development and suggest that early readers at age 6-7 are already using the same cortical network to process printed words as adults, though the connections among these regions are modulated by reading proficiency, and cortical regions for reading are tuned by experience toward reduced and more focused activation. This fMRI study has demonstrated, for the first time, the neurodevelopment of reading across the lifespan and suggests that learning experience, instead of pre-existing brain structures, determines reading acquisition.

Accelerating Adolescent Vocabulary Growth: Development of an Individualized, Web-Based, Vocabulary Instruction Program.

Purpose Improving vocabulary knowledge is important for many adolescents, but there are few evidence-based vocabulary instruction programs available for high school students. The purpose of this article is to describe the iterative development of the DictionarySquared research platform, a web-based vocabulary program that provides individualized vocabulary instruction, and to report the results of 2 pilot studies examining the feasibility of implementation and potential effectiveness with high school students. Method We describe our theory of change and 5 phases of iterative development. In Phases 1 and 2, we evaluated the initial implementation of DictionarySquared and revised the instructional materials. In Phase 3, we conducted a feasibility study involving 169 high school students who used the program for 4 weeks. Student usage data and feedback from teachers were used to guide program revisions in Phase 4. In Phase 5, we examined potential effectiveness for 264 high school students who were assigned to use the program for 1 semester. Results Results of the Phase 3 study indicated that implementation of the program was feasible, although usage was below assigned levels. Results of the Phase 5 study indicated that the duration of active program usage significantly predicted posttest vocabulary scores on the proximal assessment after controlling for pretest standardized vocabulary scores. Analyses using propensity score matching revealed positive, but nonsignificant, gains on standardized assessments between pre- and posttests. Conclusion Together, the results of early-stage pilot studies are promising and suggest that a more rigorous test of efficacy is warranted. Successful implementation of the DictionarySquared research program, as well as lessons learned from the program development process, will expand the range of evidence-based treatment options that clinicians and educators can use to improve adolescent vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.9765161.

The contributions of language control to executive functions: From the perspective of bilingual comprehension.

Previous studies have suggested that bilingual production experience has beneficial effects on executive functions. In the current study, four experiments were conducted to investigate whether bilingual comprehension experience influences executive functions. In Experiments 1 and 2, Chinese-English bilinguals completed a flanker task interleaved with a language comprehension task (reading comprehension in Experiment 1 and listening comprehension in Experiment 2). There were three blocks distinguished by language context, with a Chinese (L1) block, an English (L2) block, and a mixed (L1 and L2) block. Results showed that performance in the mixed block was better on both congruent and incongruent flanker trials when compared with the L1 and L2 blocks, indicating better monitoring functions overall. In Experiments 3 and 4 (reading comprehension and listening comprehension, respectively), participants were also exposed to three language contexts (i.e., L1, L2, and mixed block) but performed a non-conflict control task that did not require any conflict resolution. The results of Experiments 3 and 4 showed similar performance under the three different language contexts. Taken together, these results indicate that language control mechanisms involved in bilingual comprehension contribute to domain-general executive control performance. The results suggest a monitoring mechanism establishes a bridge connecting executive functions and bilingual language control during comprehension.

Learning new meanings for known words: Perturbation of original meanings and retention of new meanings.

Learning a new, unrelated meaning for a known word faces competition from the word's original meaning. Moreover, the connection of the word with its original meaning also shows a subtle form of interference, a perturbation, when tested immediately after learning. However, the long-term effects of both types of interference are unclear. The present study paired both high and low frequency words with new unrelated meanings, testing the fate of new and original meanings on three different days over one week as a function of word familiarity. The results were that learners maintained memory for new meanings of high frequency words better than the new meanings of low frequency words over one week. Following learning, meaning decisions on high frequency words that required the original meaning of the trained word were delayed relative to decisions on control words - but only when testing was immediate and the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between the trained word and its original meaning probe was 200 ms. When the SOA was 500 ms or when the test was delayed by one day or one week, no effect occurred. The findings indicate that in the learning of new meanings for known words, word familiarity benefits long-term retention of new meanings. The facilitation effect occurs along with a perturbation effect, in which the original meaning of a familiar word is made momentarily less accessible immediately after learning.

Reading Pinyin activates sublexcial character orthography for skilled Chinese readers.

How do skilled Chinese readers, accustomed to characters, process Pinyin, a phonemic transcription of Chinese? Does the orthography of Chinese characters become activated? In four experiments, native speakers first made a meaning judgment on a two-syllable word written in Pinyin. Immediately following, they responded to a character whose orthography sometimes was related to the character corresponding to the Pinyin. In Experiments 1 and 3, participant named the color of the presented characters; there was an interference effect when the presented characters included phonetic radicals that were part of the character corresponding to the Pinyin. In Experiments 2 and 4, participants named the character; naming times were affected if either the semantic or phonetic radical was shared with the character corresponding to the Pinyin. The results indicate that access to lexical representations in Chinese is centered on the orthographic character, even when the input is Pinyin.

ERP indicators of L2 proficiency in word-to-text integration processes.

Studies of bilingual proficiency have largely focused on word and sentence processing, whereas the text level has received relatively little attention. We examined on-line second language (L2) text comprehension in relation to L2 proficiency with ERPs recorded on critical words separated across a sentence boundary from their co-referential antecedents. The integration processes on the critical words were designed to reflect different levels of text representation: word-form, word-meaning, and situational level (Kintsch, 1998). Across proficiency level, bilinguals showed biphasic N400/late positive component (LPC) effects related to word meaning integration (N400) and mental model updating (LPC) processes. More proficient bilinguals, compared with less proficient bilinguals, showed reduced amplitudes in both N400 and LPC when the integration depended on semantic and conceptual meanings. When the integration was based on word repetitions and inferences, both groups showed reduced N400 negativity while elevated LPC positivity. These effects reflect how memory mechanisms (processes and resources) support the tight coupling among word meaning, readers' memory of the text meaning and the referentially-specified meaning of the text. They further demonstrate the importance of L2 semantic and conceptual processing in modulating the L2 proficiency effect on L2 text integration processes. These results align with the assumption that word meaning processes are causal components in variations of comprehension ability for both monolinguals and bilinguals.

GraphCom: A multidimensional measure of graphic complexity applied to 131 written languages.

We report a new multidimensional measure of visual complexity (GraphCom) that captures variability in the complexity of graphs within and across writing systems. We applied the measure to 131 written languages, allowing comparisons of complexity and providing a basis for empirical testing of GraphCom. The measure includes four dimensions whose value in capturing the different visual properties of graphs had been demonstrated in prior reading research-(1) perimetric complexity, sensitive to the ratio of a written form to its surrounding white space (Pelli, Burns, Farell, & Moore-Page, 2006); (2) number of disconnected components, sensitive to discontinuity (Gibson, 1969); (3) number of connected points, sensitive to continuity (Lanthier, Risko, Stolz, & Besner, 2009); and (4) number of simple features, sensitive to the strokes that compose graphs (Wu, Zhou, & Shu, 1999). In our analysis of the complexity of 21,550 graphs, we (a) determined the complexity variation across writing systems along each dimension, (b) examined the relationships among complexity patterns within and across writing systems, and (c) compared the dimensions in their abilities to differentiate the graphs from different writing systems, in order to predict human perceptual judgments (n = 180) of graphs with varying complexity. The results from the computational and experimental comparisons showed that GraphCom provides a measure of graphic complexity that exceeds previous measures in its empirical validation. The measure can be universally applied across writing systems, providing a research tool for studies of reading and writing.

Word-to-text integration: ERP evidence for semantic and orthographic effects in Chinese.

Although writing systems affect reading at the level of word identification, one expects writing system to have minimal effects on comprehension processes. We tested this assumption by recording ERPs while native Chinese speakers read short texts for comprehension in the word-to-text integration (WTI) paradigm to compare with studies of English using this paradigm. Of interest was the ERP on a 2-character word that began the second sentence of the text, with the first sentence varied to manipulate co-reference with the critical word in the second sentence. A paraphrase condition in which the critical word meaning was coreferential with a word in the first sentence showed a reduced N400 reduction. Consistent with results in English, this N400 effect suggests immediate integration of a Chinese 2-character word with the meaning of the text. Chinese allows an additional test of a morpheme effect when one character of a two-character word is repeated across the sentence boundary, thus having both orthographic and meaning overlap. This shared morpheme condition showed no effect during the timeframe when orthographic effects are observed (e.g. N200), nor did it show an N400 effect. However, character repetition did produce an N400 reduction on parietal sites regardless it represented the same morpheme or a different one. The results indicate that the WTI integration effect is general across writing systems at the meaning level, but that the orthographic form nonetheless has an effect, and is specifically functional in Chinese reading.

Perturbation of old knowledge precedes integration of new knowledge.

The importance of memory consolidation in integrating new knowledge has received much recent attention in the field of word learning. Less examined is the change in existing word knowledge as a result of learning, which we hypothesize to occur prior to the opportunity for consolidation. To test this, we had participants learn new meanings for known words and novel words. Then they performed a one-back task on a list of words that included the trained words followed by words that probed either their new or original meanings while EEGs were recorded. A probe word related to the new meaning of the preceding trained word did not show an N400 reduction compared to an unrelated word, suggesting that the new meaning had not been fully integrated, consistent with one account of complementary learning systems. However, when the probe word was related to the original meaning of the preceding trained word a perturbation effect was observed, indicated by a larger negativity at the central midline cluster (Cz) within 500-700 ms when the trained word had a new meaning than when presented as an exposure control. The perturbation effect suggests that even before a new meaning has become integrated with a word form, the attempt to learn a new meaning temporarily makes the original meaning of a word less accessible.