1,721,001 research outputs found
Prepositional compounds are sensitive to agrammatism: Consequences for models of lexical retrieval
No full textWord and pseudoword superiority effects: evidence from a shallow orthography language
No full textThe Word Superiority Effect (WSE) denotes better recognition of a letter embedded in a word rather than in a pseudoword. Along with WSE, also a Pseudoword Superiority Effect (PSE) has been described: it is easier to recognize a letter in a legal pseudoword than in an unpronounceable nonword. At the current state of the art, both WSE and PSE have been mainly tested with English speakers. The present study uses the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm with native speakers of Italian (a shallow orthography language). Differently from English and French, we found WSE for RTs only, whereas PSE was significant for both accuracy and reaction times (RTs). This finding indicates that, in the Reicher-Wheeler task, readers of a shallow orthography language can effectively rely on both the lexical and the sublexical routes. As to the effect of letter position, a clear advantage for the first letter position emerged, a finding suggesting a fine-grained processing of the letter strings with coding of letter position, and indicating the role of visual acuity and crowding factor
Characteristics of writing disorders in Italian dyslexic children
No full textObjective: This study characterizes the spelling impairment of Italian dyslexic children and evaluates the relationship between reading and spelling disorders. Background: Developmental spelling deficits are much less investigated than reading deficits. Based on the dual-model approach, studies of English speaking subjects describe a surface and a phonological syndrome. In languages with shallow orthographies, there is evidence of surface and phonological dyslexia, but no data are available for dysgraphia. Methods: Eighteen dyslexic children were studied. Writing was investigated by means of a spelling test that included regular words with one-sound-to-one-letter correspondence, regular words requiring syllabic conversion rules, words with unpredictable transcription and non-words with one-sound-to-one-letter correspondence. The dyslexics' spelling errors were compared to those of 30 age-matched proficient readers. Results: The dyslexic participants were very slow readers. Their errors were compatible with the hypothesis of a prevalent use of the sub-lexical reading procedure (i.e., surface dyslexia). They were also generally impaired with respect to the control children in all sub-sections of the spelling test. However, multivariate and single case analyses as well as qualitative analysis of errors indicated that their major problem was writing words with unpredictable transcription. This failure was consistent with the view of prevalent sub-word level processing in writing. Conclusion: The pattern of the spelling impairment mirrors the children’s reading impairment, with most children suffering from surface dysgraphia
Influence of verb and noun bases on reading aloud derived nouns: Evidence from children with good and poor reading skills
Full text linkSeveral studies on children and adults with and without linguistic
impairment have reported differences between verb and noun processing. The
present study assessed whether noun and verb bases affect differently children’s
reading of derived words. Thirty-six Italian good readers and 18 poor readers, all 4th or 5th graders, were asked to read aloud nouns derived from either a noun base (e.g.,artista, artist) or a verb base (e.g., punizione, punishment). Word and base frequency affected latencies only for deverbal nouns, while an effect of word length emerged for denominal nouns and an inhibitory effect of suffix length was found for both types of stimuli. A high base frequency and a high whole-word frequency both
led to higher levels of accuracy. Verb bases led to higher error rates than noun bases. Poor readers, although slower and less accurate than good readers, showed a pattern of results similar to that of typically developing readers. Data confirm that in 4th and 5th graders morphological decomposition may affect reading aloud of long complex words, and that the grammatical class of the base can modulate this effect
Do Italian dyslexic children use the lexical reading route efficiently? An orthographic judgment task
No full textThe study uses an orthographic judgment task to evaluate the efficiency of the lexical reading route in Italian dyslexic children.
It has been suggested that Italian dyslexic children rely prevalently on the sub-word-level routine for reading. However, it is not easy to test the lexical reading route in Italian directly because of the lack of critical items (irregular words), so visual lexical decision tasks and the comprehension/detection of pseudo-homophones are often used. While the former may also be solved on the basis of visual familiarity or phonological re-codification, the latter also involves conceptual and syntactic skills.
Eleven dyslexic children participated in the study, performing an orthographic judgment task on stimuli with two phonologically plausible spellings, of which only one was orthographically correct. Their performance was compared with those of 11 proficient readers.
The dyslexic children showed selective impairment in detecting phonologically plausible errors, but their performance was normal when required to judge errors inserted in words with regular orthography, i.e. devoid of orthographic ambiguity, and for which a sub-word-level reading procedure is sufficient to guarantee a good performance.
Overall, data are coherent with a diagnosis of surface dyslexia, with most children showing defective orthographic lexical processing
L’effetto di superiorità della parola e della pseudoparola: Una rassegna della letteratura e prospettive future.
No full textIl paradigma di Reicher-Wheeler (Reicher, 1969; Wheeler, 1970) consente di osservare la presenza dell’Effetto di Superiorità della Parola, vale a dire che è più facile riconoscere una lettera presentata in una parola piuttosto che in una non parola o presentata come lettera singola. Finora il fenomeno è stato prevalentemente testato in lingua inglese e in condizione di presentazione centrale. L’effetto di Superiorità della Parola ha permesso di dimostrare l'attivazione automatica delle entrate ortografico-lessicali nella lettura. L'osservazione di questo effetto è importante, in quanto porta supporto sperimentale a favore dei principali modelli cognitivi di lettura (es. Coltheart et al, 1980; 2001) e di riconoscimento ortografico (es. Grainger & Ziegler, 2011). È stato descritto anche un Effetto di Superiorità della Pseudoparola, cioè, una superiorità delle pseudoparole sulle non parole illegali. In questa revisione, passiamo in rassegna e commentiamo i principali studi su questi fenomeni. Inoltre, consideriamo l'utilizzo del paradigma del Reicher-Wheeler in altri campi della psicolinguistica e in neuropsicologia
Word and Pseudoword Superiority Effects: Evidence From a Shallow Orthography Language
No full textThe Word Superiority Effect (WSE) denotes better recognition of a letter embedded in a word rather than in a pseudoword. Along with WSE, also a Pseudoword Superiority Effect (PSE) has been described: it is easier to recognize a letter in a legal pseudoword than in an unpronounceable nonword. At the current state of the art, both WSE and PSE have been mainly tested with English speakers. The present study uses the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm with native speakers of Italian (a shallow orthography language). Differently from English and French, we found WSE for RTs only, whereas PSE was significant for both accuracy and reaction times (RTs). This finding indicates that, in the Reicher-Wheeler task, readers of a shallow orthography language can effectively rely on both the lexical and the sublexical routes. As to the effect of letter position, a clear advantage for the first letter position emerged, a finding suggesting a fine-grained processing of the letter strings with coding of letter position, and indicating the role of visual acuity and crowding factors
Surface and phonological acquired dyslexia: the anatomical basis and rehabilitation approach
No full textReading impairment in neurodegenerative diseases:A multiple single-case study
No full textBackground: Reading impairment is frequently associated with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer Disease (AD), Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) and Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA). Notwithstanding the clinical relevance of reading processes in these impairments, only a relative paucity of studies has been already published on this topic.
Aims: We investigated the reading impairment in patients suffering from different types of neurodegenerative diseases. In the light of a marked variability in pathological changes affecting brain areas potentially relevant to reading, it could be hypothesized that these neurodegenerative conditions may lead to different patterns of reading impairment.
Methods and procedures: Three groups of patients (AD, PPA, and PCA) and a control sample of neurologically healthy participants were examined with five tasks to test the ability to read and to repeat words and nonwords, as well as with an auditory and visual lexical decision task.
Outcomes & Results: No specific pattern emerged as strongly diagnostic of a specific degenerative disease. Overall, AD and PPA patients were significantly more impaired in reading nonwords than words. A lexical decision impairment in the visual modality appears to be related to PCA, while a similar deficit in the auditory modality is more suggestive of AD. A multiple single-case analysis on the reading performance was run to identify the distribution of different kinds of dyslexia: phonological dyslexia occurred in 50% of patients affected by PCA: it occurred less often in patients affected by AD (15.8%) and PPA (16.7%). Surface dyslexia occurred only in one case of AD. Age of acquisition was predictive of the reading performance for AD patients, but not for PCA and PPA patients.
Conclusions: Phonological dyslexia predominates in PCA; Surface dyslexia only occurred in one AD patient. Impairment in reading nonwords was predominantly associated with AD and PPA cases. Impairment in visual lexical decision was associated with PCA, whereas a lexical decision deficit in the auditory modality emerged in AD. Data indicate the importance of extensive testing reading and input lexical abilities in neurodegenerative impairment
Predicting the reading profiles of different neurodegenerative impairments: The case of Alzheimer’s disease, Progressive Primary Aphasia and Posterior Cortical Atrophy
No full textObjectives: We aimed at testing the reading performance in a sample of patients with neurodegenerative impairment.
Materials: We used two reading tasks of words and nonwords, and of words with unpredictable stress position, a repetition task of words and nonwords, and two lexical decision tasks (written and oral modalities).
Methods: We tested patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n=19), Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA, n=6, three logopenic variants, one semantic variant and one pure anomic) and Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA, n=4). We also tested 34 healthy participants as a control group.
Results: In oral lexical decision AD patients had significantly lower performance than those with PCA, whereas the opposite pattern was found in written lexical decision. Reading of nonwords was more impaired than reading of words in both AD and PPA patients. Multiple single case analysis identified phonological dyslexia in 50% of PCA cases, in a much lower percentage in patients with AD (15.8%) and PPA (16.7%). In one AD patient the reading disorder was classified as surface dyslexia.
Discussion: No specific patterns of reading performance emerged as predictors of different neurodegenerative impairments. In general, in written lexical decision PCA patients show a worse performance as compared to that obtained in the other two groups. On the contrary, worse performance in the oral modality may orient towards a diagnosis of AD.
Conclusions: Various forms of neurodegenerative disease occur with different cognitive profiles, and reading processes are not an exception to this rule.
References: Brambati, S. M., Ogar, J., Neuhaus, J., Miller, B. L., & Gorno-Tempini, M. L. (2009). Reading disorders in primary progressive aphasia: a behavioral and
neuroimaging study. Neuropsychologia, 47, 1893-1900.
Brambati, S. M., Ogar, J., Neuhaus, J., Miller, B. L., & Gorno-Tempini, M. L. (2009). Reading disorders in primary progressive aphasia: a behavioral and neuroimaging study. Neuropsychologia, 47(8), 1893-1900. Henry, M. L.,
Beeson, P. M., Alexander, G. E., & Rapcsak, S. Z. (2012). Written language impairments in primary progressive aphasia: a reflection of damage to central semantic and phonological processes. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24, 261-275.
Strain, E., Patterson, K., Graham, N., & Hodges, J. R. (1998). Word reading in Alzheimer's disease: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of response time and accuracy data. Neuropsychologia, 36, 155-171
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