The literature on interference in the Stroop Color-Word Task, covering over 50 years and some 400 studies, is organized and reviewed. In so doing, a set of 18 reliable empirical finding is isolated that must be captured by any successful theory of the Stroop effect. Existing theoretical positions are summarized and evaluated in view of this critical evidence and the 2 major candidate theories ―relative speed of processing and automaticity of reading― are found to be wanting. It is concluded that recent theories placing the explanatory weight on parallel processing of the irrelevant and the relevant dimensions are likely to be more sucessful than are earlier theories attempting to locate a single bottleneck in attention

/pdf/half-a-century-of-research-on-the-stroop-effect-an-31uxjoznng.pdf

Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: an integrative review.

This article describes the Dual Route Cascaded (DRC) model, a computational model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. The DRC is a computational realization of the dual-route theory of reading, and is the only computational model of reading that can perform the 2 tasks most commonly used to study reading: lexical decision and reading aloud. For both tasks, the authors show that a wide variety of variables that influence human latencies influence the DRC model's latencies in exactly the same way. The DRC model simulates a number of such effects that other computational models of reading do not, but there appear to be no effects that any other current computational model of reading can simulate but that the DRC model cannot. The authors conclude that the DRC model is the most successful of the existing computational models of reading.

DRC: a dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud.

The development of reading depends on phonological awareness across all languages so far studied. Languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography. This results in developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies and the manifestation of dyslexia across orthographies. Differences in lexical representations and reading across languages leave developmental “footprints” in the adult lexicon. The lexical organization and processing strategies that are characteristic of skilled reading in different orthographies are affected by different developmental constraints in different writing systems. The authors develop a novel theoretical framework to explain these cross-language data, which they label a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading and its development.

Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: a psycholinguistic grain size theory.

Phonological recoding and self-teaching: sine qua non of reading acquisition.

Several previous studies have suggested that basic decoding skills may develop less effectively in English than in some other European orthographies. The origins of this effect in the early (foundation) phase of reading acquisition are investigated through assessments of letter knowledge, familiar word reading, and simple nonword reading in English and 12 other orthographies. The results confirm that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge. It is argued that fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible. Syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding, whereas orthographic depth affects both word reading and nonword reading. The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies. It is hypothesized that the deeper orthographies induce the implementation of a dual (logographic + alphabetic) foundation which takes more than twice as long to establish as the single foundation required for the learning of a shallow orthography.

/pdf/foundation-literacy-acquisition-in-european-orthographies-52x5kh4sjt.pdf

Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies

The reading development of the individual members of a class of new entrants to primary school (aged 4 1/2–5 1/2 years) was studied over a period of a year. The teaching they received emphasised the formation of a “sight vocabulary”. Instruction in letter-sound associations was restricted to spelling and writing. The children appeared to “read without phonology”, that is without the application of letter-sound (grapheme-phoneme) associations. Words could be read only after they had been taught. Errors involved visual confusions and occasional semantic, visual-then-semantic, derivational, and functor substitution paralexias. Error responses were generally selected from the set of words the child had been taught and this set was represented in episodic memory. In many cases spatial distortions which were destructive of word shape were not effective in abolishing reading. The results are discussed in terms of the formation of a rudimentary word recognition system, termed a “logographic lexicon”.

Beginning reading without phonology

The results of a cognitive experimental analysis of the reading functions of four developmentally dyslexic subjects are presented. Data are considered on an individual basis in an attempt to specify the primary source of disturbance in each case, and the manner in which the normal course of reading development has been distorted. Subject RO showed an effect on the analytic functioning of the visual processor, which affected speed of non-word reading, but appeared not to have prevented the construction of a normal visual word recognition system. In subject LT a phonological impairment was implicated, and this was associated with a pattern of performance similar to that of adult phonological dyslexics. Subjects GS and SE gave evidence of serial letter-by-letter reading (impaired wholistic function of the visual processor), which produced a pattern not unlike that of adult surface dyslexics (effects of spelling regularity, regularisation errors). The manner in which these impairments might disrupt t...

Developmental dyslexia: a cognitive experimental analysis of phonological, morphemic, and visual impairments

How important are rhyme and analogy in beginning reading

/pdf/early-reading-development-in-european-orthographies-3yufyc890d.pdf

Philip H. K. Seymour

Papers

Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies

Beginning reading without phonology

Developmental dyslexia: a cognitive experimental analysis of phonological, morphemic, and visual impairments

How important are rhyme and analogy in beginning reading

Early Reading Development in European Orthographies