Exam 2

Experiment: How do Adults Read?

- Either spelling->meaning or spelling->phonology->meaning -Hypothesis - people use spelling->phonology->meaning pathway a lot, even when reading silently - have the participants decide what the word means and then question whether or not the properties of that word's sound interferes with the performance of the participant -ex. say yes or no if this is an animal "goat" YES "clean" NO "owl" YES "flee" 50%YES 50% NO -if you said that "flee" wasn't an animal, you probably responded slower than if you said it was an animal (indicates great reading skills) -conclusion - the degree to which you use a pathway depends on the word and your experience with that word - but most skilled readers use both pathways

Concept: What do category specific impairments imply about Lexical Organization?

- could support localist idea, because the area in the brain that has the natural kinds gets wiped out more often -could support distributed view, because loss is graded and is partial rather than absolute (when JBR said "insect animal" for snail, he still knew some of what was going on) -more support for distributed view - also, deficits depend on task, they perform worse if it is a fine detail task which makes us think that they might have just damaged some subcomponents like color etc. (would not expect these results in localist view)

Concept: Phonics Methods

- emphasize spelling->phonological pathway: "p" makes the [p] sound, BAT consists of 3 separate sounds -word lists help with spelling->phonology mapping: pop, top, mop, mom -rationale - it builds on phonology->meaning pathway, it allows for sounding out new words, shows relationship between spelling and speech is the strongest -Down sides - boring to teach and boring to learn; extra step (going over phonology) is slow because you cant just go from word to meaning, you have to pick apart the word; irregulars (give, said, have, were, was, done) make it difficult

Definition: TRACE Model of Speech Perception

- more interactive, uses a lot of top down information as well as some bottom up info - uses the words, the context, and other information from the speech signal to weigh which definition is most likely in that instance -does not use first sound, uses context and whole word -connectionist model -shows that phonemes in the later half of the word influence processing of the word

Definition: Cohort Model of Speech Perception

- more modular, uses lots of bottom up processing -using the sounds that you are hearing, you gradually narrow down a "cohort" of words until there is only one word left -processed from the beginning of the word to the end -from one speech signal you unconsciously develop a "cohort" of words that the speaker could be saying while they are saying the word -ex. I took the car for a S (stop, sip, strain) P (sprint, speck) I (spit, spike) N (spin, spinach) -once you have a cohort of words, you use context of the sentence to choose which word seems correct (only if acoustics is not sufficient for figuring out the word) -ex. I took the car for a spinach (NO), I took the car for a spin (YES) -PROBLEM - does not work well with word segmentation because the cohort model depends on the first sound of the word in isolation and if word segmentation is already an issue, then the cohort model might be ineffective

Definition: Deep Orthographies

- not consistent letter-phoneme mapping -cannot be 1-1 mapped -difficult because sounds like "s" sometimes mean [s] but sometimes mean [z] -harder to LEARN -when learning hebrew, kids use vowels (to make it temporarily a shallow orthography) but as they learn, they take the vowels away which creates a deep orthography (adults in these language are better without the vowels) -ex. english, hebrew, arabic, french ex. english has 26 letters = 40 phonemes

Definition: Localist View of Semantic Network

- one node per concept -there are local networks of interconnected things -one cell per thing -ex. there is one cell in your brain for banana which is connected to the cell in your brain that is yellow.. -web of interconnected nodes/cells -utilizes SPREADING ACTIVATION - reveals network structure because if you activate one note in the network, the connected nodes get activated also; automatic, not under your control, activation decreased the further away from the original word you go -can investigate associations, semantic relationships and combo of both between words

Experiment: N400 Waveforms in Priming Study

- reaction times depend on closeness of two concepts in a network -unrelated words - slowest/most negative -semantic relationships (horse-pig) - same as unrelated, slowest/most negative -Associated words (police-jail) - quicker that previous two/more positive, do differ from unrelated -Associated + semantic words (doctor-nurse) - quicker that previous two/more positive, do differ from unrelated - Results - words that cooccur are related and show up together -conclusion - experience shapes your thoughts/speech

Concept: Going from sound to word

- someone talks -> use the sounds of the word (phonology) -> try to figure out the word meaning (semantics) -incremental - people make guesses as to what they are hearing as they hear it, they do not wait for the end -two models - Cohort and TRACE

Concept: Which pathway do we use for reading?

- the degree to which you use a pathway depends on the word and your experience with that word -in general, a skilled reader uses both pathways -for easy to compute words use: spelling->phonology -for weird words like yacht, sieve, once, use: spelling->meaning -beginning readers use more spelling->phonology-> meaning, but with more and more reading and practice, spelling->meaning takes over some of the work

Concept: Triangle Model of Lexicon in Pre-Literate Children

- triangle still contains thought and word meaning, but does not contain spelling -obviously they have vision, but they cannot understand the spelling

Concept: Research on Reading

-Initially, kids rely on spelling->phonology->meaning, unless they are actively discouraged (kids are good at absorbing big data and there is a lot in phonological processing) -Spelling->meaning is harder to learn, includes arbitrary mapping and it takes time and practice, but over time this pathway takes over some of the work -discouraging phonics earlier creates poor readers

Concept: Reading to Children

-Many parents do read to their kids, but many parents do not -depends on SES and opportunities

Concept: How does brain cope with ambiguity?

-Modular (bottom up) method - using information from what you are hearing to make a best guess about what it means -Big data method - using information from prior knowledge and context to decide what it means (for lack of invariance and word segmentation, this was method most helpful)

Concept: Dyslexia and Brain Anatomy

-No overall difference in brain volume from typical readers -some studies show volume differences in certain areas (cerebellum, planum temporale (more symmetric in dyslexics), thalamus, frontal areas) but some do not show differences

Experiment: Priming Words

-Participants hear or silently read a prime word and then read the target word out loud - the amount of time it takes for the participant to read the target word give us information on priming -reading time of the target words is affected by prime-target relationship; the more related they are (doctor->nurse, bank->river) the faster the target word will be read; the more unrelated the words are (bank -> picture) the slower the target word will be to read -the previous history and most relevant things are also important for priming in participants

Experiment: Testing Cohort vs. TRACE Models

-There are four images, carriage, beaker, speaker and beetle -if cohort model is correct, the speaker pays close attention to the beginning of the word. When the word beaker is heard, beetle will also temporarily be in the cohort. However speaker would not be in the cohort, neither would carriage. Thus if the cohort model is correct, there should be just as many looks by the participant at speaker as carriage (because they are both unrelated) -if the TRACE model is correct, the participant would take into consideration the rhymed word. When the word beaker is heard, the words beetle (beginning sound) and speaker (rhyme word) would be activated and would have more looks than the word carriage -BIG FIND FOR THE TRACE MODEL - people spend more time looking at the speaker than the carriage -Results - graph shows looking duration at each image. Data supports the TRACE model because the words for beetle and speaker are looked at more than the word carriage, which means that the rhyming word competes with the target word too, not just the first sound. -Pseudoresults - if the cohort model was true and proven, the word speaker would only have been looked at as long as the word carriage because is does not have the same beginning sound and thus would not compete

Experiment: Adapted Priming to Ambiguous Words

-a participant listens to priming sentences while looking at a computer screen - ex. Mary touched the rough bark - then they would get a target words that they would have to read out loud - three types: context meaning (tree), other meaning (dog), or unrelated (cup) -Context effect only - when you hear the sentence and only think of the correct word (tree<dog=cup) -No context effect - if context has no effect and either word with an ambiguous meaning is primed (tree=dog<cup) -Both effects - mix of both (tree<dog<cup) -Results - in all cases, the unrelated word is the slowest and the one that has the correct contextual meaning is the fastest if you ask for the target words early/quickly, dog is just as quick as tree (no context effect) but if you as for the targets late/after a half second, you see the tree is quickest and the other two are the same (context effect only) -also - the strength of the context (how strongly the sentence suggests one meaning of the ambiguous word) OR plausible sounding words that are generally related to the topics of lexical representation but not relevant to the question affects whether or not multiple meanings are activated immediately Conclusion - when two meanings are equally frequent, the target time matters, but when one meaning is more frequent, it gets a boost

Definition: Acquired Dyslexia (alexia) without Agraphia

-affects left visual cortex and corpus callosum -left visual cortex impaired -right visual cortex cant transfer info to the left -language areas around left motor cortex are okay which is why the patient can still write -however incoming print cannot be read, but outgoing thoughts and writing is okay -video about woman that can write what she is thinking, but she cannot read what she has just written

Activity: Are these animals?

-asked class if these are animals, "goat" "bare" (homophone) "bake" (not animal) -with "bare" people were either slower to answer or people were wrong -testing how reading is related to speech - wanted to ignore the relationship between speech and print - PRINT AND SPEECH ARE INTEGRATED -conclusion: people cannot help activating speech for the word "bare" because they slow down or make errors - SHOWS tight integration between reading and speech -ALSO - happens more strongly for stronger/better readers than for poorer readers - because good readers activate sound of the word that they are seeing/reading

Concept: Reading Skill

-better readers have - shorter fixations, longer saccades, fewer regressions, and asymmetrical periphery (reading direction) -these all change with practice

Concept: Word/Phrase Ambiguity

-can be found in sounds, spelling, stress of word, word definition, phrases, pronouns, etc -you are rarely conscious of this ambiguity, but it is a huge challenge for your brain behind the scenes -Frequently lexical ambiguities, pronoun ambiguities, phrase ambiguities etc

Concept: Dyslexic use of spelling->phonology pathway

-different use of spelling->phonology pathway - good readers usually use left temporale for sounding out words and poor readers do not -capable dyslexic readers rely more on right brain areas

Concept: The Reading Wards

-educators disagree on which methods should be used -1950s: "why Johnny cant read" we need phonics - 1980s: whole language educational "innovation" part of learning by doing - 1990s: test scores down the tubes in states like California -2000s: "no child left behind" act mandates phonics -Schools now have to say they offer "balanced" programs but what this means varies

Concept: Whole Language Method

-emphasizes spelling-> meaning and top-down guessing -discourages phonics (ex. "car" underneath a picture of a car) -rationale - its a shorter route to get to the meaning, its literacy based (kids can read what they are interested in rather than just use speech sounds); more fun for teachers and students

Definition: Associative Priming

-ex. dog and bone - dog and bone are frequently used together in language and thus they are associates -this causes associative priming -priming for non-associated words that share some traits (dog/wolf, tiger/zebra) is nonexistent and weak -Priming reflects past association or past experience

Definition: Saccades

-eye moves to next location -ballistic/programmed (but not consciously programmed) -fast = 20-30ms -typical length = 7-8 letter spaces -affected by info in periphery - position of spaces indicates length of word; longer word, bigger saccade -can be regressive to reread earlier sections

Definition: Fixation

-eye rests on texts at a given location -on fovea, there are many receptor cells that are awesome for detailed vision -you can see in fovea about 7 letters (same as what you see in a fixation) -you can see word boundaries over about 20 letters

Experiment: Sentence Reading Studies with Eyetrackers

-fixations - eye rests on texts at a given location -saccades - eye moves to next location -regressive eye movements - going back to re-read -people can detect word boundaries better on the right than the left of the text that they are reading -saccades can be regressive to reread earlier sections -they can see information about word boundaries in closer regions of text even though they cannot see the characters clearly -ONLY 7 characters in fovea, but word boundaries can be detected over 20 characters (more on right than the left) - limit the way we read - speed reading programs are non-effective

Definition: Acquired Dyslexia (alexia)

-from brain injury after normal skills have been acquired -caused by brain injury in adults -no speaking impairments (reading aloud - Wernickes-Geshwind Model: Primary visual cortex -> Wernicke's area -> Broca's area -> primary motor cortex) -lots of reading impairments -video - man has reading impairment after a stroke

Concept: Signs of dyslexia

-genetic -cooccurs with other atypical development -somewhat more in males than in females -complex trait - deals with more than one specific gene -comes from genes and environment interaction and there are several risk factors

Concept: Speed Reading

-instructional technique to challenge reading habits and increase speed -speed reading assumes that: -spelling->phonology pathway is very slow -you can increase size of perceptual span (what you can see in fovea) -regressive eye movements should be eliminated -None of this is really true -BUT you can learn to read faster with practice, reading things that are challenging (difficult vocab and sentence structures) and by reading to boost vocab and syntax

Concept: Rethinking Category Specific Impairments

-it is not the categories themselves that cause natural kinds to be impaired more frequently, but the other aspects that come along with the category of natural kinds -we need to look at features within the groups - correlated vs. distinctive features -correlated - features that tend to go together (has fur -> has legs -> has eyes...); most things in natural kinds make them more similar to one another and to distinguish them you need knowledge about details of subsets and these details are harder to retrieve from memory - RESULT - natural kinds are harder to retrieve from memory than artifacts -distinctive - features that are really unique to one concept (ex. elephant has trunk); properties of artifacts tend to be more distinctive because they are made for a certain job and therefore they are pretty unique and easier to retrieve from memory

Definition: Category Specific Impairments

-loss of semantic knowledge but with preservation of other knowledge -Two types: -loss of natural kinds - things in the world that humans didn't create (animals, clouds, trees, etc.) -loss of artifacts - things that humans created (tools, computers, buildings, etc) -test this by using this image and asking which picture in redish is most related to the picture in white -also struggle with verbal fluency - ex. how many tools/animals can you name in one minute -also uses pictures of half seal half horse animal or a half screw driver half hammer and asks if it is a real thing -also patient has to pick the correct head/top for the bottom

Definition: Triangle model of lexicon

-meaning/semantics -> written text/orthography -> speech/phonology ->

Definition: Developmental Dyslexia

-present since birth - failure to acquire age-appropriate reading skills despite adequate intelligence and opportunities to learn -Risk factors: genetic and environmental risk factors, behaviorally defined disorder, low literacy in the home, low SES, poor schools

Concept: Benefit of reading aloud

-reading aloud does not really teach kids about the concept of letters/print because children are looking at the pictures, no the text -true benefit - opportunity for spoken language learning (more words per minute than conversation and kids get more big data when read to regularly) -also provides richer language and is relevant to learning how to read (3x richer vocab and unusual sentence structure)

Concept: The effect of orthography depth on reading

-some parts of the brain show activation for deep and shallow orthographies in similar places -even with different orthographies, with print and speech, there is a similar amount of activation happening in the brain -parts of the brain that represent spelling are shaped by phonology -parts of the brain that represent spoken language are changed bu learning to read -integration is greater for good readers compared to poor readers -orthography and phonology are not distinct, they conflate and this is why people make mistake slike "flee"

Article: Fumiko Hoeft - Role of White Matter in the Brain in the Development of Reading Skills

-the CHANGE in the thickness of white matter from Kindergarten to 3rd grade predicted the development of reading skill -CHANGE in thickness of white matter predicted reading skills in 3rd grade (more change in white matter, more reading skills) -kids NEED to learn phonological awareness -beginning thickness in kindergarten tells nothing -reading does not correlate with math skills even in children struggling to learn how to rea

Concept: Distributed View of Semantic Networks

-the whole network is involved in all concepts -different parts of the brain code for different aspects (colors, pronunciations, etc.) -pattern of activation in the network that distinguishes concepts

Definition: Loss of Natural Kinds Category Specific Impairments

-things in the world that humans didn't create (animals, clouds, trees, etc.) - often a larger deficit in natural kinds than artifacts - harder for these people to name something like an elephant than a stool -ex. when asked what a snail is JBR replied "an insect animal" when asked what a briefcase is JBR replied "small case used by student to carry papers"

Concept: Getting the right interpretation of an ambiguous word

-traditional view - MODULAR - systems in brain act independently of each other; 1st you dont use context, just look at the word and activate any meaning that goes with that word, 2nd you use context to decide between these meanings and choose the appropriate one

Definition: Lexical Ambiguity

-uncertainty in words -earlier research supports modular view (like bark dog tree example) but later research supports interactive view

Definition: Shallow Orthographies

-very consistent phonology mapping -1 letter = 1 phoneme, pretty consistently - ex. spanish, itialian, finnish, serbian -ex. cyrillic alphabet has 30 signs = 30sounds

Definition: N400

-waveform shows a negative voltage peak about 400 ms -reflects semantics and coherence -"whip cream tastes sweet" vs. "whip cream tastes anxious" -detects when something doesn't make sense

Definintion: Periphery

-word boundaries can be detected over 20 characters - more on right than the left because that is where you are going - anticipation -can only see word boundaries over 20 letters

Concept: Languages

-written component is used to... -help with pronunciation/phonetics (but mostly this one) -help with meaning/semantics

Concept: Semantic Network and Spreading Activation

-your lexicon not only has words, but also contains ideas about how the words are related to each other -2 types: localist view or distributed view

Question: Priming studies present a prime word and then a target word right afterward, and the experiment participant has to respond to the target--to read it aloud or to judge it in some way such as saying whether it is a real word or refers to an animal or something like that. Which kinds of prime and target pairs will likely yield priming (faster responses to the target in this priming condition compared to some control condition)?

A prime and target that have previously occurred together in people's past experience, but which don't necessarily share semantic features. Example: dog-bone

Definition: Dyslexia

Two types: -Developmental dyslexia - present since birth - failure to acquire age-appropriate reading skills despite adequate intelligence and opportunities to learn -Acquired dyslexia (alexia) - from brain injury after normal skills have been acquired -not a stagnant definition (like obesity) lots of moving parts and different things to consider depending on the child before a diagnosis can be made

Concept: How should reading be taught?

Two ways: -teach visual patterns: spelling -> meaning (ex see the word cat and understand what it means, but know that the word is not actually a cat) -teach phonological patterns: spelling -> sound -> meaning (use latin or something to break apart words or even more simply with like -s or -ed) -in 4&6th grade, only about 34-36% of kids are proficient in reading... -in WI less than 50% of students in grades 3-8 are proficient or better int english and math