The acquisition of print-to-meaning links in reading: an investigation using novel writing systems

阅读是我们最显著的认知能力之一。在很短的时间内，大多数孩子从煞费苦心地读出组成单词的单个符号，到快速和看似自动地从熟练的读者体验到的这些符号中获得意义。识字对个人、社会和经济有着深远的影响：除其他外，它减少了对国家福利的依赖，提高了对民主进程的参与。然而，与我们的其他基本能力（如走路，说话）不同，学习阅读需要明确的指导和练习。为了理解文本，学习字母语言的幼儿首先将印刷文字翻译成口语形式，然后他们使用他们的口语知识来恢复含义。这种从印刷到声音再到意义的映射通常被称为子单词过程，因为单词被分解成系统地对应于声音的字母，然后才能获得意义。阅读教学的最新进展表明，拼音教学有助于儿童发展这些子词阅读技能。大多数孩子然后进步到使用一个更有效的全词过程，即意义是直接从印刷品访问。然而，我们知道，在欧盟，大约20%的15岁儿童未能完成这一转变，因此很难使用阅读来学习。到目前为止，很难调查哪些因素影响了子词（印刷到声音到意义）和全词（印刷到意义）阅读策略的发展。这部分是因为通常很难诊断人们在阅读时使用的策略，部分是因为在不引入科学混淆或道德问题的情况下改变儿童学习环境的各个方面是非常具有挑战性的实验。为了克服这些挑战，我们开发了一个实验室模型的阅读收购，我们研究的过程中，成年人学习阅读新的单词写在不熟悉的符号（即人工正字法）。这种方法使我们能够准确地操纵学习的内容以及如何通过完美的实验控制来学习，并使用认知神经科学的前沿技术观察定期时间点的表现变化。基于这些原因，我们相信这一新的研究方法有助于我们理解影响阅读习得的因素。我们将进行三个实验，让成年人在两周的时间里学习阅读人工拼写。在实验1中，我们将比较学习阅读字母文字中的单词，其中单个符号和声音之间存在系统关系，并学习阅读语标文字中的单词，其中单个符号和声音之间没有系统关系。在实验2中，成年人将学习阅读字母书写的单词，但对于一组单词，他们将集中精力学习大声朗读，而对于另一组单词，他们将集中精力学习其含义。在实验3中，我们将研究拼写到声音的不规则性对这些学习过程的影响。在训练之前、早期和结束时，我们将使用行为和大脑成像技术来诊断学习者在完成阅读任务时使用子词和全词过程的程度。我们的结果将提供有关一个人的语言技能、他们正在学习的写作系统以及他们的教学方式如何影响子词和全词阅读途径发展的重要知识。因此，我们预计，我们的研究结果将有利于在中长期内帮助研究人员设计基于证据的阅读干预措施，并在扫盲教育和政策更普遍。

Reading is one of the most remarkable of our cognitive abilities. In a short space of time, most children go from painstakingly sounding out the individual symbols that make up words, to the rapid and seemingly automatic access to meaning from these symbols that skilled readers experience. Literacy has a profound impact on individuals, society, and the economy: amongst other things, it decreases dependency on state benefits and improves participation in the democratic process. Yet, unlike many other of our fundamental capacities (e.g. walking, talking), explicit instruction and practice are necessary in learning to read.To comprehend text, young children learning alphabetic languages start by translating printed words into their spoken forms, and then they use their knowledge of spoken language to recover meaning. This print-to-sound-to-meaning mapping is often referred to as a sub-word process because words are broken down into letters that systematically correspond to sounds before meaning is accessed. Recent advances in the teaching of reading have shown that phonics instruction helps children to develop these sub-word reading skills. Most children then progress to using a more efficient whole-word process whereby meaning is accessed directly from print. However, we know that around 20% of 15-year-old children in the European Union fail to make this transition, and thus find it difficult to use reading to learn. To date it has proven difficult to investigate which factors influence the development of sub-word (print-to-sound-to-meaning) and whole-word (print-to-meaning) reading strategies. This is partly because it is often difficult to diagnose which strategies people are using when they read, and partly because it is very challenging experimentally to vary aspects of a child's learning environment without introducing scientific confounds or ethical issues. To overcome these challenges we have developed a laboratory model of reading acquisition in which we study the processes by which adults learn to read new words written in unfamiliar symbols (i.e. an artificial orthography). This method enables us to manipulate exactly what is learned and how it is learned with perfect experimental control, and to observe changes in performance at regular time points using techniques at the leading edge of cognitive neuroscience. For these reasons, we believe that this new approach can contribute to our understanding of the factors that contribute to reading acquisition. We will conduct three experiments in which adults learn to read artificial orthographies intensely over a period of two weeks. In Experiment 1, we will compare learning to read words written in an alphabetic script in which there is a systematic relationship between individual symbols and sounds with learning to read words written in a logographic script in which there is no systematic relationship between individual symbols and sounds. In Experiment 2, adults will learn to read words written in alphabetic scripts, but for one set of words they will concentrate on learning to read them aloud, whereas for another set of words they will concentrate on learning their meanings. In Experiment 3, we will examine the effect of spelling-to-sound irregularity on these learning processes. Before, early, and at the end of training, we will use behavioural and brain imaging techniques to diagnose the extent to which learners engage sub-word versus whole-word processes to accomplish the reading tasks.Our results will provide vital knowledge about how a person's language skills, the writing system they are learning, and the way they are taught affect the development of sub-word and whole-word reading pathways. Thus, we anticipate that our findings will be of benefit in the middle to longer term in helping researchers to design evidence-based reading interventions and in informing literacy education and policy more generally.