Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Orthographic influences on division of labor in learning to read Chinese and English: Insights from computational modeling |
| Author: | Jianfeng Yang |
| Institution: | Chinese Academy of Science |
| Author: | Hua Shu |
| Institution: | Beijing Normal University |
| Author: | Bruce D. McCandliss |
| Institution: | Vanderbilt University |
| Author: | Jason Zevin |
| Institution: | Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology–Weill Medical College of Cornell University |
| Linguistic Field: | Computational Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics |
| Abstract: | Learning to read in any language requires learning to map among print, sound and meaning. Writing systems differ in a number of factors that influence both the ease and the rate with which reading skill can be acquired, as well as the eventual division of labor between phonological and semantic processes. Further, developmental reading disability manifests differently across writing systems, and may be related to different deficits in constitutive processes. Here we simulate some aspects of reading acquisition in Chinese and English using the same model for both writing systems. The contribution of semantic and phonological processing to literacy acquisition in the two languages is simulated, including specific effects of phonological and semantic deficits. Further, we demonstrate that similar patterns of performance are observed when the same model is trained on both Chinese and English as an “early bilingual”. The results are consistent with the view that reading skill is acquired by the application of statistical learning rules to mappings among print, sound and meaning, and that differences in the typical and disordered acquisition of reading skill between writing systems are driven by differences in the statistical patterns of the writing systems themselves, rather than differences in cognitive architecture of the learner. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition Vol. 16, Issue 2, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
