Investigating the reading processes captured by he missing-letter effect

当被要求清点或划掉句子或段落中的字母f时，如：完成的文件是多年科学研究结合多年经验的结果，人们在识别目标字母功能上比在内容词上更难。这就是所谓的字母缺失效应。在上面的示例中，有六个文件系统，但大多数读者很难在中找到这三个文件系统。这在一定程度上是因为f in of的发音是v，但最重要的是因为它是一个虚词，意义不大。例如，当f在功能词和实词中发音相同时，当f嵌入到Fun、Far和Figure等实词中时，会出现更多的遗漏(Saint-Aubin&Klein，2001)。40多年来，遗漏字母效应一直被用作了解阅读连续文本所涉及的认知过程的窗口。我的研究项目的长期目标是更好地了解基本的阅读过程。该建议的短期目标是根据我们最近提出的一个新模型：丢失字母效应的注意脱离模型(Roy-Charland等人，2007年)，研究丢失字母效应捕获的阅读过程。根据这一假说，省略是由于阅读过程对语篇的注意分配和检测过程的效率所致。与实词相比，读者更有可能错过功能中的目标字母，因为他们会很快不再关注前者。与我的学生一起，我们将用各种方法系统地测试新的假说。首先，我们将通过改变要检测的目标来调查读者扫描的信息的性质。其次，我们将通过分离他们的阅读和他们的识别技能的贡献来调查好的和差的读者在字母搜索任务中的差异。第三，我们将调查阅读和听力之间的共同点。

When asked to count or cross out the letter f in a sentence or paragraph like: FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF MANY YEARS, people have greater difficulty detecting target letters in function than in content words. This is known as the missing-letter effect. In the example above, there are six fs, but most readers have difficulty finding the three fs in of. This is partly due because the f in of is pronounced as a v, but most importantly because it is a function word that carries little meaning. For instance, the same pattern of results is observed when f is pronounced the same in function and content words with more omissions when it is embedded in the function word for than in content words like fun, far, and fig (Saint-Aubin & Klein, 2001). The missing-letter effect has been used for more than four decades as a window on the cognitive processes involved in reading continuous text. The long-term goal of my research program is to better understand the basic reading processes. The short-term objectives of this proposal are to investigate the reading processes captured by the missing-letter effect in light of a new model we recently proposed: the Attentional Disengagement model of the missing-letter effect (Roy-Charland et al., 2007). According to this hypothesis, omissions are due to the allocation of attention on text by reading processes and to the efficiency of the detection process. Readers will be more likely to miss a target letter in a function than a content word because they will rapidly stop paying attention to the former. With my students, we will systematically test the new hypothesis with a variety of methodologies. First, we will investigate the nature of the information scanned by readers by varying the target to be detected. Second, we will investigate how good and poor readers differ at the letter search task by isolating the contribution of their reading and of their detection skills. Third, we will investigate the communalities between reading and listening for comprehension.