Given the increasing number of neuroimaging publications, the automated knowledge extraction on brain-behavior associations by quantitative meta-analyses has become a highly important and rapidly ...growing field of research. Among several methods to perform coordinate-based neuroimaging meta-analyses, Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) has been widely adopted. In this paper, we addressed two pressing questions related to ALE meta-analysis: i) Which thresholding method is most appropriate to perform statistical inference? ii) Which sample size, i.e., number of experiments, is needed to perform robust meta-analyses? We provided quantitative answers to these questions by simulating more than 120,000 meta-analysis datasets using empirical parameters (i.e., number of subjects, number of reported foci, distribution of activation foci) derived from the BrainMap database. This allowed to characterize the behavior of ALE analyses, to derive first power estimates for neuroimaging meta-analyses, and to thus formulate recommendations for future ALE studies. We could show as a first consequence that cluster-level family-wise error (FWE) correction represents the most appropriate method for statistical inference, while voxel-level FWE correction is valid but more conservative. In contrast, uncorrected inference and false-discovery rate correction should be avoided. As a second consequence, researchers should aim to include at least 20 experiments into an ALE meta-analysis to achieve sufficient power for moderate effects. We would like to note, though, that these calculations and recommendations are specific to ALE and may not be extrapolated to other approaches for (neuroimaging) meta-analysis.
Orthography–semantics consistency (OSC) is a measure that quantifies the degree of semantic relatedness between a word and its orthographic relatives. OSC is computed as the frequency-weighted ...average semantic similarity between the meaning of a given word and the meanings of all the words containing that very same orthographic string, as captured by distributional semantic models. We present a resource including optimized estimates of OSC for 15,017 English words. In a series of analyses, we provide a progressive optimization of the OSC variable. We show that computing OSC from word-embeddings models (in place of traditional count models), limiting preprocessing of the corpus used for inducing semantic vectors (in particular, avoiding part-of-speech tagging and lemmatization), and relying on a wider pool of orthographic relatives provide better performance for the measure in a lexical-processing task. We further show that OSC is an important and significant predictor of reaction times in visual word recognition and word naming, one that correlates only weakly with other psycholinguistic variables (e.g., family size, word frequency), indicating that it captures a novel source of variance in lexical access. Finally, some theoretical and methodological implications are discussed of adopting OSC as one of the predictors of reaction times in studies of visual word recognition.
This volume provides a space for the development of dialogue between dialectologists, language community activists, and other researchers working on the development of orthographies regarding issues ...that arise during the creation of writing systems in places where there is dialect variation and an absence of writing systems, or where there is a writing system for a national language but not for the particular related language. The chapters in this volume address two major themes: first, the imperative for standardization is influenced by many social and political factors, including identity, age, ease of use of the language, and familiarity, as well as the nature of the language itself. The second theme investigated by the authors is the assumption of the value of standardization, which in many cases leads to overt or covert negotiations or conflicts in the process of language planning and orthography development. These themes are addressed through the experiences of the authors of working with languages and dialects in various parts of the world, including Cyprus, Poland, Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico, among others. The languages examined in this volume include both those for which there have long been writing systems for "standard" dialects (such as Cypriot Greek and Podlachian, which is sometimes said to be a Belarusian-Ukrainian variety) and those for which writing has been only recently introduced (such as Cayuga, Oneida, and Mixean).
•fMRI data reveal the distinct nature of orthographic impact at the radical and character level in Chinese spoken language.•Phonology-to-orthography consistency effects in the speech network imply ...orthography reshapes phonological representations.•Homophone density effects in the occipitotemporal regions imply orthography is co-activated during spoken word recognition.
Previous studies have shown that reading experience reshapes speech processing. The orthography can be implemented in the brain by restructuring the phonological representations or being co-activated during spoken word recognition. This study utilized event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and functional connectivity analysis to examine the neural mechanism underlying two types of orthographic effects in the Chinese auditory semantic category task, namely phonology-to-orthography consistency (POC) and homophone density (HD). We found that the POC effects originated from the speech network, suggesting that sublexical orthographic information could change the organization of preexisting phonological representations when learning to read. Meanwhile, the HD effects were localized to the left fusiform and lingual gyrus, suggesting that lexical orthographic knowledge may be activated online during spoken word recognition. These results demonstrated the different natures and neural mechanisms for the POC and HD effects on Chinese spoken word recognition.
The present article describes a modified and extended replication of a corpus study by Brewer (2008.
. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona PhD thesis) which reports differences in the acoustic duration ...of homophonous but heterographic sounds. The original findings point to a quantity effect of spelling on acoustic duration, i.e., the more letters are used to spell a sound, the longer the sound's duration. Such a finding would have extensive theoretical implications and necessitate more research on how exactly spelling would come to influence speech production. However, the effects found by Brewer (2008) did not consistently reach statistical significance and the analysis did not include many of the covariates which are known by now to influence segment duration, rendering the robustness of the results at least questionable. Employing a more nuanced operationalization of graphemic units and a more advanced statistical analysis, the current replication fails to find the reported effect of letter quantity. Instead, we find an effect of graphemic complexity. Speakers realize consonants that do not have a visible graphemic correlate with shorter durations: the /s/ in
is shorter that the /s/ in
. The effect presumably resembles orthographic visibility effects found in perception. In addition, our results highlight the need for a more rigorous approach to replicability in linguistics.
Do the neural circuits for reading vary across culture? Reading of visually complex writing systems such as Chinese has been proposed to rely on areas outside the classical left-hemisphere network ...for alphabetic reading. Here, however, we show that, once potential confounds in cross-cultural comparisons are controlled for by presenting handwritten stimuli to both Chinese and French readers, the underlying network for visual word recognition may be more universal than previously suspected. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a semantic task with words written in cursive font, we demonstrate that two universal circuits, a shape recognition system (reading by eye) and a gesture recognition system (reading by hand), are similarly activated and show identical patterns of activation and repetition priming in the two language groups. These activations cover most of the brain regions previously associated with culture-specific tuning. Our results point to an extended reading network that invariably comprises the occipitotemporal visual word-form system, which is sensitive to well-formed static letter strings, and a distinct left premotor region, Exner’s area, which is sensitive to the forward or backward direction with which cursive letters are dynamically presented. These findings suggest that cultural effects in reading merely modulate a fixed set of invariant macroscopic brain circuits, depending on surface features of orthographies.
Readers of different ages and across different languages routinely process information of upcoming words in a sentence, before their eyes move to fixate them directly (parafoveal processing). ...However, there is inconsistent evidence of similar parafoveal processing in a reader's second language (L2). In this eye movement study, the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975a) was used to test whether parafoveal processing of orthographic information is an integral part of both beginning and proficient L2 reading. The eye movements of beginning L2-learners (
= 53, aged 11-14 years) and highly proficient L2-users (
= 56, aged 19-65 years) were recorded while they read sentences in their first language (L1) German and L2 English. Sentences each contained a cognate target word (e.g., English: tunnel, German: Tunnel). The parafoveal preview of the targets either (a) preserved the spelling and meaning of the target (identity condition), (b) preserved letter identities but transposed the position of two adjacent letters (transposed-letter TL condition, e.g., tunenl/Tunenl), or substituted the identity of two adjacent letters (substituted-letter condition, e.g., tunocl/Tunocl). TL previews elicited longer early first-pass reading times than identity previews in both L1 and L2 reading in children and adults, suggesting that letter position was processed parafoveally. Substituted-letter previews resulted in longer reading times than TL previews in children and adults in L1 and L2, suggesting that letter identity information was processed independently of position information. These results suggest that letter position and identity information are extracted from the parafovea during L1 and L2 reading, facilitating word recognition in children and adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
As many studies have now demonstrated that morphological awareness contributes to students' literacy development, there is growing interest in the educational value of instruction in morphological ...awareness. This review was undertaken to integrate findings of studies that sought to determine whether such instruction contributed to improvement in literacy. Analysis of the 16 studies that met selection criteria is organized around researchers' purpose(s) in studying the relation of morphological awareness instruction to key components of literacy development (i.e., phonology, orthography, word meaning). Results indicate that morphological awareness has the potential to contribute to students' literacy development in all three areas—most notably when it deepens students' understanding of the morphemic structure, spelling, and meaning of written words. However, examination of the design and quality of the studies of instruction in morphological awareness suggests that this is an emerging area of research. Much needs to be done to provide a clearer understanding of how, when, and why morphological awareness instruction contributes to students' literacy development.
Esta investigación pretende determinar las repercusiones inmediatas que en España tiene la oficialización de la ortografía académica de 1844 en las aspiraciones de los maestros neógrafos que, tras un ...breve periodo de silencio, encuentran a partir de los años sesenta nuevas vías de reivindicación en la prensa pedagógica, donde se erigen como símbolo de la lucha contra la ortografía académica. El Magisterio. Periódico de educación y enseñanza, Anales de primera enseñanza, Boletín de Primera Enseñanza de la provincia de Sala?nanca y La conciliación. Revista de primera enseñanza son testigos de las diferentes polémicas entre neógrafos y academicistas, en las que autores como Ruiz Morote, Rosa y Arroyo y Basilio Tirado, entre otros, demandan unidad entre los maestros para que sus peticiones de reforma ortográfica sean aceptadas y ejecutadas por la Academia, elevada ahora a única autoridad en el asunto. En este trabajo se analiza el contenido de todas estas acciones neógrafas y su repercusión tanto en las actuaciones de la RAE a partir de la década de los sesenta como en la adopción de las diferentes medidas que, a partir del denominado sexenio democrático, son adoptadas en el plano lingüístico y educativo para los años sucesivos. Palabras clave: Historiografía lingüística, ortografía española, prensa española, siglo XIX, Real Academia Española, neografía. This research aims to determine the immediate repercussions that the officialization of the academic orthography in 1844 has on the hopes of neographers in Spain. After a brief period of quiet, they find new ways of vindication in the pedagogical press, where they become as symbol of the fight against academic orthography El Magisterio. Periódico de educación y enseñanza, Anales de primera enseñanza, Boletín de Primera Enseñanza de la provincia de Salamanca and La conciliación. Revista de primera enseñanza are witnesses of the different controversies between neographers and academicians, in which authors like Ruiz Morote, Rosa y Arroyo and Basilio Tirado demand unity among the teachers so that their requests for orthographic reform are accepted and executed by the Academy, the only authority in the matter. This paper analyses the content of all these reformist actions and their impact both on the actions of the RAE from the 1960s onwards and on the adoption of the different measures that will emerge on linguistic and educational levels of the following years, from the so-called six democratic. Keywords: Linguistic Historiography, Spanish orthography, Spanish press, 19th century, Spanish Royal Academy, neography.
The volume covers recent theories and findings on writing and spelling words. Understanding word production is fundamental to writing research as it allows understanding how words -the basic elements ...of written language- are stored in the writers' brain, and how words' and tasks' properties affect word retrieval.
PDF
