Basic processes in visual word identification

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The ability to read is a skill that is essential to modern living. This skill is acquired, and even university students vary widely in how skilled they are. This skill is also intimately related to attention and automaticity. I hold the view that individual properties of “automaticity” need to be investigated separately. For example, many processes are automatic in the restricted sense that they are unconscious, but the extent to which they use or require different kinds of attention (e.g., spatial attention; central attention; executive attention), are issues that need individual investigation. *** A working hypothesis is that there are various dissociations between these indices, based on my previous research in the last granting period. For example, spatial attention is a necessary preliminary for all word recognition processes, regardless of how skilled the reader is (indeed, simply increasing the spacing between letters in a word helps young dyslexics readers; this occurs because for such readers one of their difficulties is weak spatial attention and hence normally spaced letters crowd each other). In contrast, the need for "central" attention (operationally defined in the context a paradigm where two tasks overlap in time, similar, arguably, to word identification processes on one word overlapping with ongoing comprehension processes for adjacent words) may well vary as a function of skill for various individual processes (sublexical- below the level of the word; lexical-word level, and semantic). Many of our publications in the last granting period have focused on these issues in skilled readers, and in this grant application I continue this line of work, but include the inter-relationships between attention and automaticity (measured and defined in multiple ways) and skill (defined as “reading” skill at the single word level) combined with levels of working memory capacity. I continue to address the issue of which word recognition processes (sublexical, lexical and semantic) require which form of attention, rather than being “automatic”. *** ***The experimental work I am proposing involves the role of (a) spatial attention (b) central attention, (b) executive attention (set), and how they are involved (or not) in sublexical, lexical and semantic level processing as a function of reading skill and working memory capacity. I will utilize both cognitive and cognitive neuroscience paradigms to investigate these issues. The research from my lab is at the forefront of the field which considers the intersection of word recognition and attention, and makes Canada a major player in this endeavour. Importantly, there is an applied payoff for such work given the 2 million people in Canada who are functionally illiterate (as in the example provided above re spatial attention). As for graduate students and post docs who work with me, they can either go into industry (as several have done) or go in academic positions.