Unlike other visual objects which are invariant to the left-right orientation, mirror letters (e.g., b and d) represent different object identities. Previous masked priming lexical decision studies have suggested that the identification of a mirror letter involves suppression of its mirror image counterpart reporting as evidence that a pseudoword…

Most second language assessment researchers agree that interactional competence (IC) is an important part of the construct of oral communication. However, measurement of IC has proven challenging because at least one interlocutor is considered necessary to create an appropriate social context for test takers to demonstrate their IC. Including…

Studies have reported the importance of intervention programs to support early literacy in preschool. However, very few studies have tested the efficacy of intervention programs based on the syllabic method. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel computer-based program based on the syllabic method for preschoolers (the Simo-syl…

Today, many children worldwide grow up in bilingual or multilingual families. This study explores early literacy development in Russian-Hebrew bilingual families in Israel. It studies the contribution of the home literacy environment (HLE), the language of communication, and the nature of the maternal writing support in Hebrew and Russian, to…

In this study we asked whether nonwords created by transposing two phonemes (/biks[open-mid back rounded vowel]t/) are perceived as being more similar to their base words (/bisk[open-mid back rounded vowel]t/) than nonwords created by substituting two phonemes (/bipf[open-mid back rounded vowel]t/). Using the short-term phonological priming and a…

Skilled reading is thought to rely on well-specified lexical representations that compete during visual word recognition. The establishment of these lexical representations is assumed to be driven by phonology. To test the role of phonology, we examined the prime lexicality effect (PLE), the index of lexical competition in signing deaf (N = 28)…

Purpose: Many children have difficulties understanding speech. At present, there are few assessments that test for subtle impairments in speech perception with normative data from U.K. children. We present a new test that evaluates children's ability to identify target words in background noise by choosing between minimal pair alternatives that…

The mirror effect is the finding that in recognition tests, a manipulation that increases the hit rate also decreases the false alarm rate. For example, low frequency words have a higher hit rate and a lower false alarm rate than high frequency words. Because the mirror effect is held to be a regularity of memory, it has had a pronounced influence…

Background: Previous research has shown that syllables are important units in visual word recognition in Spanish. If they are treated as real phonological units, then other related phonological features such as lexical stress (syllable prominence) may also play a role in this process. At times, lexical stress is the only difference between minimal…

Reading is one of the most important milestones a child achieves throughout development. Above the letter level, the syllable has been shown to play a relevant role at early stages of visual word recognition in adult skilled readers. However, studies aiming to examine when, during reading acquisition, the syllable emerges as a functional…

Skilled readers have developed a certain amount of tolerance to variations in the visual form of words (e.g., CAPTCHAs, handwritten text, etc.). To examine how visual distortion affects the mapping from the visual input onto abstract word representations during normal reading, we focused on a single type of distortion: letter rotation.…

To compare the influences of concreteness and imageability on Chinese two-character (2C) word recognition, two experiments were conducted in a primed task on a cohort of skilled readers. In addition to PRIME (2C words or their transposed constituent characters) and DIRECTION (forward or backward collocations between prime words and targets),…

Children in out-of-home care persistently show poorer educational and developmental outcomes than their peers. This study investigates the effect of the comprehensive educational intervention, "LUKoP," in a randomized controlled trial, compared to treatment-as-usual (TAU). Outcome measures included reading and math abilities, IQ and…

Learning to read depends on the ability to extract precise details of letter combinations, which convey critical information that distinguishes tens of thousands of visual word forms. To support fluent reading skill, one crucial neural developmental process is one's brain sensitivity to statistical constraints inherent in combining letters into…

The environment in which infants learn language is multimodal and rich with social cues. Yet, the effects of such cues, such as eye contact, on early speech perception have not been closely examined. This study assessed the role of ostensive speech, signalled through the speaker's eye gaze direction, on infants' word segmentation abilities. A…