Abstract
Statistical views of reading highlight the link between proficient literacy and the assimilation of various regularities embedded in writing systems, including those in the mapping between print and meaning. Still, orthographic-semantic (O-S) regularities remain relatively understudied, with open questions regarding 3 issues: (a) how O-S regularities should be quantified, (b) how they impact the behavior of proficient readers, and (c) whether individual differences in sensitivity to these regularities predict reading skills. The goal of the current article is to address these questions. We start by reviewing previous studies estimating print-meaning regularities, where orthography-to-semantics consistency (OSC) is defined as the mean semantic similarity between a word and its orthographic neighbors. While we adopt this general strategy, we identify a potential confound in previous operational definitions. We therefore offer a modified measure, which we use to examine group-level OSC effects in available data sets of single word recognition and reading for comprehension. Our findings validate the existence of OSC effects but reveal variation across tasks, with OSC effects emerging more strongly in tasks involving a direct mapping of print to meaning. Next, we present a reanalysis of word naming data from 399 second through fifth graders, where we examine individual differences in reliance on O-S regularities and their relation to participants' reading skills. We show that early readers whose naming accuracy is more influenced by OSC (i.e., those who rely more on O-S) have better passage comprehension abilities.
Original language | American English |
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Pages (from-to) | 839-855 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition |
Volume | 48 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2022 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Kevin S. Brown and Kenneth R. Pugh for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award P20HD091013. The data included in the individualdifferences analysis was collected under support by this grant as well as by Award P01HD070837. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Noam Siegelman received funding from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), Grant 48/20
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. American Psychological Association
Keywords
- Individual differences
- Orthographic-semantic regularities
- Print-meaning mapping
- Reading
- Word recognition