FROM WORDS TO SOUNDS
Which comes first, the sound or the meaning? Or is it possible that you access both at once? Turns out that we can dissociate between these two things. There are three sort of possibilities. ONE is a lexical lookup (irregular). For this you have to use meaning first because it doesn't sound like it looks like. TELF is a direct construction (pseudowords). WON is a combination of lexical lookup and direct construction (irregular).
The brain has separate processes for this. There is something called acquired dyslexia, which is acquired later on in life. Surface dyslexics are impaired on the lexical route. This means that you will be impaired at irregular words, fine with non words, and ok at regular words. Deep or phonemic dyslexics are impaired at the contraction route. This means you can pronounce both regular and irregular words but you cannot pronounce non-words or pseudo words.
Regular, then irregular, then lastly pseudo words are listed in order of which route is quickest to use to pronounce a word. Lexical always win which is why you don't mess up when pronouncing words like ONE. However when construction and lexical are close in a word then there is delay before you are able to pronounce the word. We don't necessarily have to use the meaning to get the sound but this is the usual route.
USE SOUNDS TO ACESS MEANING
Van Order had people decide if words were real words or not, and then if the word is the member of a category or not (e.g., is meat part of the food category? How about rock?) Meat would be endorsed in this category of food 100% of the time. Meet is endorsed about 25% of the time. Melt is endorsed 10% of the time. Rock is endorsed 0% of the time. In meet and melt people will sometimes initially use the sound to get the meaning but then they will realize their mistake. This shows that sometimes sound is used before meaning.
READING: EYE MOVEMENT
When you read what do your eyes do? They will fixate and saccade. Fixation will last for about 200-250 ms then it will jump between fixations (lasts about 25-50 ms & jumps 7-9 characters) and this jump is known as a saccade. You do not actually process any information in this jumps. So the question is how much info can you extract with each fixation?
The fixation point is about the size of a quarter held at arms length. That is not very big so are we only able to see detail in this point or can we see details from the whole scene or page?
Eye Tracking
How do we see these saccades? People have volunteered to let researchers put a camera close to their eye and track the movements. They found that a person who is reading has smaller times for fixation than people doing a visual search. The visual searchers also move backwards sometimes. Visual search in dyslexics is pretty similar to normal but in reading by someone with dyslexia it was very jerky and random seeming.
Moving-window Technique
If you mask out the letters that are outside the fixation point then it was found that people didn't notice. So the words in the fixation point were normal (about 15 characters long) and there were random jumbles of letters outside of the fixation point. They also did this with X's instead of random letters but that was a bit more noticeable. The reason we don't notice is that we are not attending to that information. It was also found that we read about 2 words at a time (normal reading rate is 330 wpm, 1 word takes us to 200 wpm, 2 words is 300 wpm, & 3 words is 330 wpm). Good readers process the currently read word plus the next word at the same time.
Perceptual span is where you are fixating plus a little bit to your right (or left if you read right to left). You can switch fluently between these two (left or right) if you start reading in a different direction. What if you could increase the perceptual span?
INCREASING THE PERCEPTUAL SPAN
Just & Carpenter took these speed reading classes and measured their saccades to see if the speed reading classes really did what they claimed to do. They found that reading speed increased but comprehension did not improve.
CONTEXT ON WORD IDENTIFICATION
Do you read faster if you know what is coming up next? Yes. So for example if you see a sentence with a baker taking a bomb to a wedding or a baker taking a cake to a wedding you will process the second sentence faster because it is normal but the surprising bomb would cause you to process the information slightly slower.
Which comes first, the sound or the meaning? Or is it possible that you access both at once? Turns out that we can dissociate between these two things. There are three sort of possibilities. ONE is a lexical lookup (irregular). For this you have to use meaning first because it doesn't sound like it looks like. TELF is a direct construction (pseudowords). WON is a combination of lexical lookup and direct construction (irregular).
The brain has separate processes for this. There is something called acquired dyslexia, which is acquired later on in life. Surface dyslexics are impaired on the lexical route. This means that you will be impaired at irregular words, fine with non words, and ok at regular words. Deep or phonemic dyslexics are impaired at the contraction route. This means you can pronounce both regular and irregular words but you cannot pronounce non-words or pseudo words.
Regular, then irregular, then lastly pseudo words are listed in order of which route is quickest to use to pronounce a word. Lexical always win which is why you don't mess up when pronouncing words like ONE. However when construction and lexical are close in a word then there is delay before you are able to pronounce the word. We don't necessarily have to use the meaning to get the sound but this is the usual route.
USE SOUNDS TO ACESS MEANING
Van Order had people decide if words were real words or not, and then if the word is the member of a category or not (e.g., is meat part of the food category? How about rock?) Meat would be endorsed in this category of food 100% of the time. Meet is endorsed about 25% of the time. Melt is endorsed 10% of the time. Rock is endorsed 0% of the time. In meet and melt people will sometimes initially use the sound to get the meaning but then they will realize their mistake. This shows that sometimes sound is used before meaning.
READING: EYE MOVEMENT
When you read what do your eyes do? They will fixate and saccade. Fixation will last for about 200-250 ms then it will jump between fixations (lasts about 25-50 ms & jumps 7-9 characters) and this jump is known as a saccade. You do not actually process any information in this jumps. So the question is how much info can you extract with each fixation?
The fixation point is about the size of a quarter held at arms length. That is not very big so are we only able to see detail in this point or can we see details from the whole scene or page?
Eye Tracking
How do we see these saccades? People have volunteered to let researchers put a camera close to their eye and track the movements. They found that a person who is reading has smaller times for fixation than people doing a visual search. The visual searchers also move backwards sometimes. Visual search in dyslexics is pretty similar to normal but in reading by someone with dyslexia it was very jerky and random seeming.
Moving-window Technique
If you mask out the letters that are outside the fixation point then it was found that people didn't notice. So the words in the fixation point were normal (about 15 characters long) and there were random jumbles of letters outside of the fixation point. They also did this with X's instead of random letters but that was a bit more noticeable. The reason we don't notice is that we are not attending to that information. It was also found that we read about 2 words at a time (normal reading rate is 330 wpm, 1 word takes us to 200 wpm, 2 words is 300 wpm, & 3 words is 330 wpm). Good readers process the currently read word plus the next word at the same time.
Perceptual span is where you are fixating plus a little bit to your right (or left if you read right to left). You can switch fluently between these two (left or right) if you start reading in a different direction. What if you could increase the perceptual span?
INCREASING THE PERCEPTUAL SPAN
Just & Carpenter took these speed reading classes and measured their saccades to see if the speed reading classes really did what they claimed to do. They found that reading speed increased but comprehension did not improve.
CONTEXT ON WORD IDENTIFICATION
Do you read faster if you know what is coming up next? Yes. So for example if you see a sentence with a baker taking a bomb to a wedding or a baker taking a cake to a wedding you will process the second sentence faster because it is normal but the surprising bomb would cause you to process the information slightly slower.
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