I. Bendror et al., ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION AND PHONEMIC SEGMENTATION IN SKILLED READERS - A CROSS-LANGUAGE COMPARISON, Psychological science, 6(3), 1995, pp. 176-181
The long-lasting effect of reading experience in Hebrew and English on
phonemic segmentation was examined in skilled readers. Hebrew and Eng
lish orthographies differ in the way they represent phonological infor
mation. Whereas each phoneme in English is represented by a discrete l
etter, in unpointed Hebrew most of the vowel information is not convey
ed by the print, and, therefore, a letter often corresponds to a CV ut
terance (i.e., a consonant plus a vowel). Adult native speakers of Heb
rew or English, presented with words consisting of a consonant, a vowe
l, and then another consonant, were required to delete the first ''sou
nd'' of each word and to pronounce the remaining utterance as fast as
possible. Hebrew speakers deleted the initial CV segment instead of th
e initial consonant more often than English speakers, for both Hebrew
and English words. Moreover, Hebrew speakers were significantly slower
than English speakers in correctly deleting the initial phoneme, and
faster in deleting the whole syllable. These results suggest that the
manner in which orthography represents phonology not only affects phon
ological awareness during reading acquisition, but also has a long-las
ting effect on skilled readers' intuitions concerning the phonological
structure of their spoken language.