The Quality of Orthographic Representations and Their Importance for Spelling and Reading

当一个单词被存储在记忆中时，它可以根据它的发音，书写方式或它所代表的概念来访问。例如，“apple”的发音有三个音素（例如，/p/ l/），用双辅音分隔两个音节（例如，苹果），并表示脆，甜水果。因此，单词学习就是在记忆中创造和提炼这些语音（声音）、拼写（字母）和语义（意义）成分的过程。这个概念在阅读领域并不新鲜。事实上，它已经被联结主义模型和认知模型讨论了二十多年。例如，根据词汇质量假设，词汇表征的质量导致准确的拼写和流畅的单词阅读（Perfetti，2007）。如果语音，拼写和语义都是词汇质量的贡献者，那么这些成分中任何一个的缺陷都会抑制单词的阅读。然而，考虑到拼写许多单词需要详细的正字法表示，阅读可以在不完整的正字法表示的情况下进行;毕竟，我们可以阅读许多我们可能无法拼写的单词。因此，尽管广泛接受的重要性，所有三个组成部分的字的身份，正字法的质量在字阅读中发挥的作用仍然不确定，有一个稀缺的研究，直接评估其作用。目前的建议是通过一系列的研究与典型的成年读者，其中他们的拼写性能直接比较阅读速度在各种复杂的单词。这项研究直接解决了这个问题：拼写正确的单词是否能更快地获得和阅读？目前的建议还包括实验训练研究，以检查是否训练，以提高正字法和/或语义表征的质量产生增加阅读速度。换句话说，通过加强成分表征的质量和它们之间的联系，我们是否会看到阅读速度和熟练程度的提高，正如当前理论所预测的那样？

When a word is stored in memory, it can be accessed in terms of how it sounds, how it is written, or the concepts it represents. For example 'apple' is pronounced with three phonemes (e.g., /æ/ /p/ l/), written with a doubled consonant separating two syllables (e.g., apple), and signifies a crunchy, sweet fruit. Word learning, then, is the process of creating and refining these phonological (sounds), orthographic (letters), and semantic (meaning) components of word identity in memory. This concept is not new to the reading field. In fact, it has been discussed by connectionist models and cognitive models for over two decades. According to the lexical quality hypothesis for example, it is the quality of the lexical representations that results in accurate spelling and fluent word reading (Perfetti, 2007). If phonology, orthography, and semantics are all contributors to lexical quality, then a deficiency in any one of these components should dampen word reading. Yet consider that while a detailed orthographic representation is needed to spell many words, reading can proceed with incomplete orthographic representations; We can, after all, read many words that we may not be able to spell. Thus, despite widespread acceptance for the importance of all three components of word identity, the role orthographic quality plays in word reading remains uncertain and there is a scarcity of research that directly evaluates its role. The present proposal does so through a series of studies with typical adult readers, in which their spelling performance is directly compared to reading speed across a variety of complex words. The proposed research directly addresses the question: are words that are spelled correctly accessed and read faster? The current proposal also includes experimental training studies that examine whether training to increase the quality of orthographic and/or semantic representations yields increases in reading speed. In other words, by strengthening the quality of the component representations and the links between them, will we see the increase in reading access speed and proficiency as may be predicted by current theory?