Reading

• Reading research has been strongly focussed on alphabetic writing systems and, within those, strongly focussed on the English language.
• The visual span seems to depend on more basic, visual processes.
• The visual span is the size of a window for which a briefly flashcard>
• Many reading systems are logographic (pictures) rather than alphabetic (Chinese, Japanese Kanji).
• Even alphabetic systems use different symbols (Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Korean, Japanese Hiragana/Katakana) some restricted to consonants only.
• Some use accents and other markers.
• Many alphabetic systems are much more regular in their spelling sound correspondence than English.
• English is well known for the irregular relationship between its orthography (i.e., spelling) and phonology (i.e., sound).
• “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a lough, he coughed and hiccoughed”.
• In English, the letter “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways.
• This makes English reading comparatively difficult to learn.
• Other languages (e.g., Spanish, Czech, Italian, Welsh) are much more regular.
• A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that, when changed, reliably changes the meaning of a word.
• In alphabetic scripts, graphemes (way of writing down phonemes) are single letters OR groups of letters that correspond to a single phoneme in a given language.
• A grapheme is a way of writing down a phoneme.
• For example, the “th”, the “r” and the “ough” in through are three separate graphemes.
• A double letter can indicate a different sound from its single version, and so are different graphemes (e.g., “hop/hoop” in English, “Llewelyn” in Welsh, or “la paella” in Spanish).
• Saccades are relatively small in size, about eight letters or spaces.
• Saccades are rapid, with durations around 20-30ms.
• Saccades are ballistic, once started you can’t change direction.
• Saccades are not always in a consistent direction, about 10% are regressions – going back.
• The perceptual span is smaller if the reading task is difficult, so it depends a bit on the load.
• During reading, eye movements are divided into phases of fixation and saccades.
• Fixation is when the eye is relatively stationary at a particular position, with typical duration of around 200-250ms.
• A saccade is a rapid jerk as the eyes move from one fixation to another.
• Recognizing the order in which those letters/graphemes are present is a crucial aspect of reading.
• The perceptual span is the size of the “window” around the fixation point from which information is being extracted for reading.
• Recognizing the individual letters and the variety of graphemes that might be present is a crucial aspect of reading.
• For right-to-left languages like Urdu and Hebrew, the asymmetry is the other way round.
• The size of the perceptual span is different for different people, and larger for those with better language ability (not vision or eye-movement ability).
• Controlling the eyes efficiently to process strings of written symbols is a crucial aspect of reading.
• Mapping from those graphemes to the corresponding phonemes (e.g., in reading aloud) is a crucial aspect of reading.
• Prof Keith Rayner has researched eye movement speed.
• Mapping from the relevant graphemes to the corresponding grammar (syntax) and meaning (semantics), perhaps via sounds (phonology) is a crucial aspect of reading.
• In the left-to-right reading of English, the perceptual span extends from about 4 characters to the left and 15 characters to the right of fixation.
• Reading in an alphabetic script requires multiple skills.
• Why is the strong focus on alphabetic writing systems and English language in reading research considered a problem? Many reading systems worldwide are logographic or use different alphabets.
• What is an example of the irregular relationship between English orthography and phonology mentioned in the text? "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman..."
• In alphabetic scripts, what is a grapheme? A single letter or group of letters that correspond to a single phoneme.
• What does a fixation during eye movements in reading refer to? Stationary position of the eye at a particular point.