Speech Processes in Reading

本项目旨在阐明内隐言语过程在默读中所起的作用。虽然人们早就知道在阅读过程中会发生声下活动，但其意义和控制它的条件尚未得到很好的理解。关于这种言语活动是功能性的还是仅仅是没有意义的副产品，人们存在分歧。这个项目的核心假设是自动激活理论，即识别印刷单词通常会引起与字母和单词本身相关的语音片段的激活。这与另一种观点（“双重路径”理论）形成了对比，即印刷文字有时被“重新编码”成语音，而在其他时候则直接通过“视觉路径”识别。自动激活理论的第二个假设是，语音代码一旦被激活，就会一直是句子的心理表征的一部分，直到某些理解过程完成。自动激活理论的两个假设将在两种类型的实验中得到验证：一种是使用向后视觉掩蔽，这是一种实验过程，在这个过程中，一个单词在屏幕上闪现很短的一段时间，然后是一个“面具”的短暂闪现，一个视觉显示可能会或可能不会共享它所跟随的单词的特定特征。最近的研究发现，面具造成的干扰程度既取决于面具共享语音片段的程度，也取决于面具与它所掩盖的单词共享字母的程度。掩蔽实验将改变被掩蔽词的特征，这些特征通常会影响识别速度；这将提供一种自动激活理论和双路径理论做出不同预测的情况。第二种实验将通过测试视觉绕口令效应来关注语音在阅读中的作用：默读重复语音片段的句子的时间比默读正常句子的时间长，例如，“Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers..”。实验将探讨这种效应是否发生在扩展文本阅读中，以及当读者的目标是主旨理解而不是细节理解时，这种效应是否会减弱，这两种理论对这种情况做出了不同的预测。这项研究对阅读障碍的本质具有启示意义。根据现有证据，某些类型的阅读障碍很可能与学习阅读和记忆语言输入时语音片段的使用缺陷有关。在某种程度上，这个项目揭示了正常的阅读过程，它可能有助于理解某些残疾病例中语言相关缺陷的本质。

This project seeks to illuminate the role that implicit speech processes play in silent reading. Although subvocal activity has long been known to occur during reading, its significance and the conditions controlling it are not well understood. There is disagreement about whether this speech activity is functional or merely a by-product of no significance. The central assumption of the theory underlying this project, automatic activation theory, is that identification of printed words routinely causes activation of speech segments associated with letters and with the words themselves. This contrasts with the view ("dual route" theory) that printed words are sometimes "recoded" into speech and at other times identified directly through the "visual route." A second assumption of automatic activation theory is that the speech code, once activated, remains part of the mental representation of a sentence until certain comprehension processes have been completed. The two assumptions of automatic activation theory will be tested in two types of experiments: One type will use backward visual masking, an experimental procedure in which a word is flashed on the screen for a very short period of time, followed by a brief flash of a "mask", a visual display that may or may not share specific characteristics of the word it follows. Recent research has found that the degree of disruption caused by a mask depends both on the degree to which the mask shares speech segments and also on the degree to which the mask shares letters with the word it masks. The masking experiments will vary characteristics of the word being masked that usually affect the speed at which it is identified; this will provide a situation in which the automatic activation and the dual route theories make different predictions. The second kind of experiment will focus on the role of speech in reading by examining the visual tongue-twister effect: The time for silent reading of sentences that repeat speech segments, e.g., "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers..", is longer than for normal sentences. The experiments will address whether such effects occur in extended text reading and whether they are diminished when the reader has a goal of gist comprehension rather than detailed understanding, situations for which the two theories make different predictions. This research has implications for the nature of reading disability. According to available evidence, it is quite likely that some kinds of reading disability are linked to defective use of speech segments in learning to read and in memory for linguistic input. To the extent that this project sheds some light on normal reading processes, it may help in understanding the nature of the speech-related defect in some cases of disability.