CHILDRENS ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS AND LINGUISTIC TRANSPARENCY - NONSENSE WORD READING IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND SPANISH

Citation
U. Goswami et al., CHILDRENS ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS AND LINGUISTIC TRANSPARENCY - NONSENSE WORD READING IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND SPANISH, Applied psycholinguistics, 19(1), 1998, pp. 19-52
Citations number
65
Categorie Soggetti
Language & Linguistics","Psychology, Experimental
Journal title
ISSN journal
01427164
Volume
19
Issue
1
Year of publication
1998
Pages
19 - 52
Database
ISI
SICI code
0142-7164(1998)19:1<19:CORALT>2.0.ZU;2-E
Abstract
Three experiments were conducted to compare the development of orthogr aphic representations in children learning to read English, French, or Spanish. Nonsense words that shared both orthography and phonology at the level of the rhyme with real words (cake-dake, comic-bomic), phon ology only (cake-daik, comic-bommick), or neither (faish, ricop) were created for each orthography. Experiment 1 compared English and French children's reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme orthography wi th real words (dake) with those that did not (daik). Significant facil itation was found for shared rhymes in English, with reduced effects i n French. Experiment 2 compared English and French children's reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme phonology with real words (daik) w ith those that did not (faish). Significant facilitation for shared rh yme phonology was found in both languages. Experiment 3 compared Engli sh, French, and Spanish children's reading of nonsense words (dake vs. faish) and found a significant facilitatory effect of orthographic an d phonological familiarity for each language. The size of the familiar ity effect, however, was much greater in the less transparent orthogra phies (English and French). These results are interpreted in terms of the level of phonology that is represented in the orthographic recogni tion units being developed by children who are learning to read more a nd less transparent orthographies.