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Background: Despite evidence that synthetic phonics teaching has increased reading attainments, a sizable minority of children struggle to acquire phonics skills and teachers lack clear principles for deciding what types of additional support are most beneficial. Synthetic phonics teaches children to read using a decoding strategy to translate letters into sounds and blend them (e.g., c-a-t = "k - ae - t" = "cat"). To use a decoding strategy, children require letter-sound knowledge (LSK) and the ability to blend sound units (phonological awareness; PA). Training on PA has been shown to benefit struggling beginning readers. However, teachers in English primary schools do not routinely check PA. Instead, struggling beginner readers usually receive additional LSK support., Aims: Until now, there has been no systematic comparison of the effectiveness of training on each component of the decoding process. Should additional support for struggling readers focus on improving PA, or on supplementary LSK and/or decoding instruction? We aim to increase understanding of the roles of LSK and PA in children's acquisition of phonics skills and uncover which types of additional training are most likely to be effective for struggling beginner readers., Sample and Method: We will compare training on each of these components, using a carefully controlled experimental design. We will identify reception-age children at risk of reading difficulties (target n = 225) and randomly allocate them to either PA, LSK or decoding (DEC) training. We will test whether training type influences post-test performance on word reading and whether any effects depend on participants' pre-test PA and/or LSK., Results and Conclusions: Two hundred and twenty-two participants completed the training. Planned analyses showed no effects of condition on word reading. However, exploratory analyses indicated that the advantage of trained over untrained words was significantly greater for the PA and DEC conditions. There was also a significantly greater improvement in PA for the DEC condition. Overall, our findings suggest a potential advantage of training that includes blending skills, particularly when decoding words that had been included in training. Future research is needed to develop a programme of training on blending skills combined with direct vocabulary instruction for struggling beginner readers., (© 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.)

Background: AIMS: To describe typical phonological development of Brazilian Portuguese (BP)-speaking children, considering the following parameters: age of customary production, acquisition and mastery., Methods & Procedures: Data were collected from 857 children aged between 3 years and 8 years 11 months with typical language and speech development. The sample was grouped into 6-month age bands. The data were analysed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Games-Howell post-hoc tests., Outcomes & Results: Stops (/p, b, t, d, k, g/), nasals (/m, n, ɲ/) and some fricatives (/f, v, s, z/) were mastered before the age of 3 years (age of mastery). The age of acquisition for phonemes /ʃ, ʒ/ was 3;6, though both were only mastered at 4;0 years. The liquid /l/ was acquired at 3;0 and mastered at age 3;6, while /x/ was acquired and mastered at age 3;6. The phoneme /ʎ/ was acquired at 7;0 and mastered at age 8;6. The tap /ɾ/ was acquired between the ages of 4;0 and 4;6, and mastered at 4;6. In coda position, /n, l/ were acquired at 3;0, while /s/ was mastered at 4;6 and /ɾ/ between 4;6 and 5;0 years. Clusters involving /ɾ/ were acquired at 6;0, while those with /l/ were acquired between the ages of 6;6 and 7;0., Conclusions & Implications: This study presented acquisition for consonants in BP and can be used as a reference for the assessment of developmental speech disorders. In this study, stops and nasals were acquired first, followed by fricatives and, lastly, liquids. This finding is corroborated by previous studies in BP and other languages., What This Paper Adds: What is already known on the subject What this paper adds to existing knowledge What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?, (© 2021 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.)

We reconcile competing theories of the role of phonological memory in reading development, by uncovering their dynamic relationship during the first 5 years of school. Phonological memory, reading and phoneme awareness were assessed in 780 phonics-educated children at age 4, 5, 6 and 9. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that phonological memory loaded onto two factors: verbal short-term memory (verbal STM; phonological tasks that loaded primarily on serial order memory) and nonword repetition. Using longitudinal structural equation models, we found that verbal STM directly predicted early word-level reading from age 4 to 6, reflecting the importance of serial-order memory for letter-by-letter decoding. In contrast, reading had no reciprocal influence on the development of verbal STM. The relationship between nonword repetition and reading was bidirectional across the 5 years of study: nonword repetition and reading predicted each other both directly and indirectly (via phoneme awareness). Indirect effects from nonword repetition (and verbal STM) to reading support the view that phonological memory stimulates phonemically detailed representations through repeated encoding of complex verbal stimuli. Similarly, the indirect influence of reading on nonword repetition suggests that improved reading ability promotes the phoneme-level specificity of phonological representations. Finally, the direct influence from reading to nonword repetition suggests that better readers use orthographic cues to help them remember and repeat new words accurately. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LZfTR0BjE., (© 2020 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Behavioral studies have shown discrepant results regarding the role of phonology in predicting math gains. The objective of this study was to use fMRI to study the role of activation during a rhyming judgment task in predicting behavioral gains on math fluency, multiplication, and subtraction skill. We focused within the left middle/superior temporal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus, brain areas associated with the storage of phonological representations and with their access, respectively. We ran multiple regression analyses to determine whether activation predicted gains in the three math measures, separately for younger (i.e. 10 years old) and older (i.e 12 years old) children. Results showed that activation in both temporal and frontal cortex only predicted gains in fluency and multiplication skill, and only for younger children. This study suggests that both temporal and frontal cortex activation during phonological processing are important in predicting gains in math tasks that involve the retrieval of facts that are stored as phonological codes in memory. Moreover, these results were specific to younger children, suggesting that phonology is most important in the early stages of math development. When the math task involved subtractions, which relies on quantity representations, phonological processes were not important in driving gains., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

It has been suggested that neuroimaging can be used to inform therapeutic intervention. The current study aimed to determine whether an individual would benefit more from training engaging their intact or their damaged neural pathway. Two males with chronic stroke aphasia participated, with DM showing milder disruption of connectivity along the dorsal language pathway relative to JS, according to distortion corrected diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Each patient received two blocks of six repetition training sessions over two weeks, one of which was "phonological" and the other "semantic" in nature. Both phonological and semantic training produced significant gains for both patients for trained items. For the untrained control items, significant gains were specific to training type for each patient. Only phonological training elicited significant generalisation for DM, which was greater than that seen for JS. Conversely, only semantic training elicited significant generalisation for JS, which was greater than that seen for DM. This double dissociation in generalisation effects suggests that a restitutive approach is more effective for patients with milder damage while a compensatory approach may be more effective for those with more severe damage. These results indicate the utility of neuroimaging to optimise relearning strategies and promote generalisation to untrained items.

Introduction: Children with cleft palate demonstrate atypical speech sound development, which can influence their intelligibility, literacy and learning. There is limited documentation regarding how speech sound errors change over time in cleft palate speech and the effect that these errors have upon mono-versus polysyllabic word production. The objective of this study was to examine the phonetic and phonological speech skills of children with cleft palate at ages 3 and 5., Methods: A cross-sectional observational design was used. Eligible participants were aged 3 or 5 years with a repaired cleft palate. The Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) Articulation subtest and a non-standardised list of mono- and polysyllabic words were administered once for each child. The Profile of Phonology (PROPH) was used to analyse each child's speech., Results: N = 51 children with cleft palate participated in the study. Three-year-old children with cleft palate produced significantly more speech errors than their typically-developing peers, but no difference was apparent at 5 years. The 5-year-olds demonstrated greater phonetic and phonological accuracy than the 3-year-old children. Polysyllabic words were more affected by errors than monosyllables in the 3-year-old group only., Conclusions: Children with cleft palate are prone to phonetic and phonological speech errors in their preschool years. Most of these speech errors approximate typically-developing children by 5 years. At 3 years, word shape has an influence upon phonological speech accuracy. Speech pathology intervention is indicated to support the intelligibility of these children from their earliest stages of development., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: It is already known that preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) tend to stutter on function words at the beginning of sentences. It is also known that phonological errors potentially resulting in part-word repetitions tend to occur on content words. However, the precise relation between word class and repetition type in preschool-age stuttering is unknown., Aims: To investigate repetitions associated with monosyllabic words in preschool-age CWS. Specifically, it was hypothesized that repetition type should vary according to word class in preschool-age CWS and children who do not stutter (CWNS)., Methods & Procedures: Thirteen preschool-age CWS and 15 preschool-age CWNS produced age-appropriate narratives, which were transcribed and coded for part-word repetitions (PWR) and whole-word repetitions (WWR) occurring on monosyllabic words. Each repetition type was also coded for word class (i.e., function versus content)., Outcomes & Results: Results indicated that although CWS and CWNS were significantly more likely to produce PWR on content words, this tendency did not differ between the two talker groups. Further, CWS and CWNS did not differ in their tendencies to produce PWR versus WWR overall, but the tendency to produce repetitions on function words was significantly greater for CWS versus CWNS., Conclusions & Implications: Findings are taken to suggest that repetitions of monosyllabic words in young children are not easily explained from the perspective of phonological errors, but may instead be considered from an incremental planning of speech perspective., (© 2015 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.)

The primary goal of this study was to examine the word identification domain of the Simple View of Reading in participants with Down syndrome (DS) by comparing them to participants with typical development (TD) matched on word identification ability. Two subskills, phonological recoding and orthographic knowledge, were measured. Results revealed that individuals with DS performed similarly to controls on 2 measures of orthographic knowledge, but more poorly on phonological recoding and a third measure of orthographic knowledge. The first two orthographic tasks included real words as stimuli; the third task used letter patterns, not real words. These results suggest that individuals with DS may have a relative strength in word-specific orthographic knowledge but not in general orthographic knowledge.

Purpose: To determine whether the naming impairment in aphasia is influenced by error learning and whether error learning is related to type of retrieval strategy., Method: Nine participants with aphasia and 10 neurologically intact controls named familiar proper noun concepts. When experiencing tip-of-the-tongue naming failure (TOT) in an initial TOT-elicitation phase, participants were instructed to adopt phonological or semantic self-cued retrieval strategies. In the error learning manipulation, items evoking TOT states during TOT elicitation were randomly assigned to a short or long time condition in which participants were encouraged to continue to try to retrieve the name for either 20 s (short interval) or 60 s (long). The incidence of TOT on the same items was measured on a post-test after 48 hr. Error learning was defined as a higher rate of recurrent TOTs (TOT at both TOT elicitation and post-test) for items assigned to the long (versus short) time condition., Results: In the phonological condition, participants with aphasia showed error learning, whereas controls showed a pattern opposite to error learning. There was no evidence for error learning in the semantic condition for either group., Conclusion: Error learning is operative in aphasia but is dependent on the type of strategy used during naming failure.

Dyslexia is theorised to be caused by phonological deficits, visuo-attentional deficits, or some combination of the two. The present study contrasted phonological and visuo-attentional theories of dyslexia using a lexical decision task administered to adult participants with and without dyslexia. Homophone and pseudo-homophone stimuli were included to explore whether the two groups differed in their reliance on phonological encoding. Transposed-letter stimuli, including both TL neighbours and TL non-words, measured potential orthographic impairment predicted by visuo-attentional deficit theories. The findings revealed no significant difference in response time or accuracy between the groups for the homophone and pseudo-homophone stimuli. However, dyslexics were significantly slower and less accurate in their responses to the TL stimuli than controls. Thus, dyslexics presented deficits consistent with visuo-attentional theories, but not with the phonological deficit theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the English translated poem "A Prayer for a Homeland" from the perspective of stylistic analysis. The Urdu origin of the poem has been written by Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi and further translated into English language by Omer Khwaja. The study aims to examine the linguistic and literary devices used in the translated text. The study adopted mixed method i.e. descriptive and exploratory design to collect, analyze and interpret the data. The sampling strategy used for this study was typical and critical case sampling technique. The poet wishes for his native country to succeed in this poem. The poet employed a variety of levels to achieve a highly effective and lucid poem. The subject, which is prayer and prosperity, is extremely obvious. He used lexical strategies and components of speech to explain his poetry. The poet hopes to see advancements in his native country. The translator did not show this poem in rhyming form. He used simple and easy language, so anyone can understand this poem. We analyzed the poem Prayer for Homeland stylistically. The poet wisely delivered his ideas by using different devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consistency between letters and sounds varies across languages. These differences have been proposed to be associated with different reading mechanisms (lexical vs. phonological), processing grain sizes (coarse vs. fine) and attentional windows (whole words vs. individual letters). This study aimed to extend this idea to writing to dictation. For that purpose, we evaluated whether the use of different types of processing has a differential impact on local windowing attention: phonological (local) processing in a transparent language (Spanish) and lexical (global) processing of an opaque language (English). Spanish and English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and Spanish–English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a writing to dictation task followed by a global–local task. The first key performance showed a critical dissociation between languages: the response times (RTs) from the Spanish writing to dictation task was modulated by word length, whereas the RTs from the English writing to dictation task was modulated by word frequency and age of acquisition, as evidence that language transparency biases processing towards phonological or lexical strategies. In addition, after a Spanish task, participants more efficiently processed local information, which resulted in both the benefit of global congruent information and the reduced cost of incongruent global information. Additionally, the results showed that bilinguals adapt their attentional processing depending on the orthographic transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging body of studies has claimed that exposure to phonetically varying speech sounds results in strictly phonological representations of speech sounds by the brain's auditory prediction system (Cornell et al., 2011; Eulitz & Lahiri, 2004; Hestvik et al., 2020; Hestvik & Durvasula, 2016; Phillips et al., 2000). We test this claim by measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) to a subcategorical contrast with two sets of phonetically varying standards. When controlling for non-prediction related contributors to the MMN, we find a mismatch in a late time window. However, the mismatch effect is only significant for participants who perceived the contrast as an across-category contrast (/t/ vs /d/). Additionally, we find no modulation of mismatch amplitude predicated on phonetic distance between standards and deviant. Taken together, this indicates that the prediction generated by the auditory system in response to phonetically varying speech sounds is indeed phonological and lacks any fine-grained phonetic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norris, Kinoshita and colleagues (Kinoshita & Norris, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(1), 1–18, 2009; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(3), 434–455, 2010; Norris & Kinoshita, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63(1), 194–204, 2008) have suggested that the masked priming same-different task (SDT) is an excellent tool for studying the orthographic coding process because, in most circumstances, performance in that task is driven entirely by orthographic codes. More specifically, although evidence of phonological influences (i.e., phonological priming effects in the SDT) have been reported, Kinoshita, Gayed, and Norris (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44(11), 1661–1671, 2018) have claimed that phonological priming does not arise in the SDT when the prime and target are written in the same script and the targets are words, the most typical experimental situation. Indeed, it does appear that no-one has yet reported phonological priming effects in such situations. The question of whether it is possible to observe phonological priming in such situations was more fully examined in the present experiments. Experiment 1 involved a masked priming SDT using Japanese Kanji script in which the primes and targets were homophonic but shared no characters. Experiment 2 was a parallel experiment using Chinese stimuli. In both experiments, phonological priming effects were observed for both one- and two-character words. These experiments indicate that, although the priming effects in masked priming SDTs undoubtedly have a strong orthographic basis, phonological codes also play a role even when the prime and (word) target are written in the same script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phonetic encoding refers to the mapping of an abstract linguistic code of the utterance into motor programmes which guide speech articulation. The encoding of speech gestures involves complex cognitive-motor planning, which has received limited attention in the psycholinguistic literature on language production relative to linguistic encoding processes. Here we will review some issues on phonetic encoding and the related empirical results by integrating evidence from psycholinguistic, phonetic, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies from the last 30 years. In particular, we will focus on (i) the distinction between phonological and phonetic encoding, (ii) the nature and size of phonetic representations and (iii) the dynamics of phonetic encoding in the time-course of utterance planning. We will end up showing that the transformation of a linguistic code into motor programmes likely involves a larger proportion of the overall utterance planning time than acknowledged in current models and with many open questions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Phonological cuing in spoken picture naming is widely used to improve word production accuracy in aphasic participants and to investigate word planning processes in psycholinguistic experiments with healthy participants. However, different paradigms and different modalities have been used across studies and populations, with some contradictory results. Aims: Here, we investigate whether and how the modality in which a phonological cue is delivered impacts on word production in picture naming tasks using the exact same paradigm with healthy and with aphasic participants. Methods & Procedure: In experiment 1, behavioural and electroencephalographic event-related potential (ERP) responses to auditory, visual and audiovisual cues in a picture naming task were investigated in healthy participants. In experiment 2, the impact of the same cue modalities was studied on errors and latencies in 15 aphasic participants. Outcomes & Results: The modality in which the cue is delivered influenced phonological facilitation effects in both populations, the audio modality being the most facilitative on production latencies in healthy participants and in participants with mild aphasia. No further gains were obtained by a double modality audiovisual cue on production latencies, whereas the double cues interfered with production accuracy in aphasic participants. ERP results not only were compatible with facilitation of phonological encoding in all experimental conditions but also showed modulation of a late encoding time period for both the visual and audiovisual cues, likely reflecting interference of the visual modality during monitoring or motor speech encoding. The latter observation is indeed coherent with the interference of the audiovisual modality that was observed on error rates in the more severely impaired aphasic participants. Conclusions: These results suggest that unimodal auditory cuing is the facilitatory condition, while visual cues in unimodal or bimodal conditions give rise to both facilitation and interference which manifest behaviourally depending on the balance of these opposing effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Identifying associations or links between encoded stimuli can influence whether those stimuli are successfully retrieved at a later time. Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of semantic and phonological lexical targets on recall in individuals with mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to identify if individuals with TBI form associations when recalling related information. Methods & Procedures: Forty-seven individuals, 14 with TBI, completed the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word retrieval paradigm in which six digitally recorded word lists were presented auditorily. Three of the lists contained semantically related words and three contained phonologically related words. Outcomes & Results: Non-brain-injured (NBI) participants recalled significantly more phonological and semantic stimuli than participants with TBI. Phonologically related stimuli resulted in increased intrusions for both TBI and NBI participants. For participants with TBI, age and time post injury were not significantly correlated with performance on the DRM paradigm, though the number of semantically related items recalled was moderately correlated with performance on standardised assessments. Though TBI participants recalled fewer words, they appeared to utilise recall strategies in a manner similar to NBI peers with intrusion data suggesting that both groups were forming associations between words. Conclusions: Individuals with mild to moderate TBI successfully identify associations between encoded stimuli and used those associations when recalling target information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The function of verbal short-term memory is supported not only by the phonological loop, but also by semantic resources that may operate on both short and long time scales. Elucidation of the neural underpinnings of these mechanisms requires effective behavioral manipulations that can selectively engage them. We developed a novel cued sentence recall paradigm to assess the effects of two factors on sentence recall accuracy at short-term and long-term stages. Participants initially repeated auditory sentences immediately following a 14-s retention period. After this task was complete, long-term memory for each sentence was probed by a two-word recall cue. The sentences were either concrete (high imageability) or abstract (low imageability), and the initial 14-s retention period was filled with either an undemanding finger-tapping task or a more engaging articulatory suppression task (Exp. 1, counting backward by threes; Exp. 2, repeating a four-syllable nonword). Recall was always better for the concrete sentences. Articulatory suppression reduced accuracy in short-term recall, especially for abstract sentences, but the sentences initially recalled following articulatory suppression were retained better at the subsequent cued-recall test, suggesting that the engagement of semantic mechanisms for short-term retention promoted encoding of the sentence meaning into long-term memory. These results provide a basis for using sentence imageability and subsequent memory performance as probes of semantic engagement in short-term memory for sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated hemispheric asymmetry in the formation of musical pitch expectations by combining the monaural listening and probe tone paradigms. On each trial, adult participants heard a short context melody and a single pitch (i.e. a probe tone). Both the context and the probe tone were played in the left or right ear. The context was an ascending major scale or pitches from the major scale in a random order. Following each context, participants rated one of three probe tones for how well it fit with the context they just heard. Probe tones were one of two pitches from the major scale (the tonic or the supertonic) or an out-of-set pitch. Participants provided the highest ratings for the tonic, followed by the supertonic, followed by the out-of-set pitch. Ratings did not differ for the tonic or out-of-set pitch between the two ears, but participants provided lower ratings for the supertonic in the right ear. For the ascending context only, the difference in ratings between the tonic and supertonic was greater in the right ear. These results suggest that the left hemisphere differentiates the stability of pitches in a set by forming temporal expectations for specific, in-set pitches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aim: Impairment in language content production, long-term memory and executive function in Parkinson's disease reported in several studies. Identification of these disorders is useful in planning for early interventions. The aim of this study was evaluation of semantic and phonemic clustering and switching in Parkinson's disease. Methods: In this study, 30 patients with Parkinson's disease and 30 healthy individuals evaluated that were matched by age, sex and educational level. Clustering and switching average were compared between the two groups according to the Troyer method. Data recorded and analyzed using independent t test and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Comparison of mean scores of clustering between patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy individuals indicated significant difference (p=0.05). In addition, significant difference was observed between mean score of switching in two groups (p=0.008). Conclusion: The finding of the present study reveal that switching between semantic or phonemic subcategory and clustering impaired in patients with Parkinson's disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examines the phonological representations that children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing peers (TD) have during the initial process of word learning. The goals of this study were to determine if children with SLI attended to different components of words than peers, and whether they were more vulnerable to interference than peers. Forty 7- and 8-year-old children, half with SLI, took part in a fast mapping, word learning task. In addition to producing the word, there was a mispronunciation detection task that included mispronunciations of the target word in the initial position, final position or that modified the word''s syllable structure. Children with SLI showed a different learning profile than peers, demonstrating stronger representations of the word-initial phonemes, but less information about word-final phonemes. They were more prone to interference overall, but especially from word-final foils. Children with SLI did not demonstrate less-defined phonological representations, but did attend to different features than TD children, perhaps in an attempt to compensate for problems learning longer words. The greatest weakness of children with SLI appears to be their susceptibility to interference, particularly for word-final information. Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to: (1) explain what children attend to when learning new words; (2) state the pattern of recognition and production performance for both children with SLI and their typical language peers; and (3) identify specific parts of novel words that are most susceptible to interference in children with SLI. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Multidimensional analysis involves moving away from one-dimensional analyses such as most articulation tests to comprehensive analyses involving levels of phonological information from the word level down to segments. This article outlines one such approach that looks at four levels from words to segments, using nine phonological measures. It also presents a new methodology for comparing children across the levels (multidimensional assessment of phonological similarity (MAPS)), and demonstrates the approach through a comparison of four sibling pairs. The results show that children can differ greatly and unpredictably in their similarities and differences, and that only a multidimensional analysis can identify where these similarities and differences may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of abstractness during the activation of a lexical representation. Abstractness and conflict are directly modeled in our approach by invoking lexical representations in terms of contrastive phono-logical features. In two priming experiments with English nouns differing only in vowel height of their stem vowels (e.g., pin vs. pan), we compare a conflict versus non-conflict situation across English dialects. Based on differences in the vowel height representation, the conflict occurs in American English, but not in New Zealand English. The results show that there is a lack of priming in the conflict, but not in the non-conflict situation. This is taken as evidence for the claim that lexical access is sensitive to conflicts and non-conflicts between acoustic-phonetic and phonological information. We therefore conclude that discrete phonological features are crucial determiners for successful speech perception, which is in line with abstractionist approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Semantic short-term memory (STM) deficits have been traditionally defined as an inability to maintain semantic representations over a delay (). Yet some patients with semantic STM deficits make numerous intrusions of items from previously presented lists, thus presenting an interesting paradox: why should an inability to maintain semantic representations produce an increase in intrusions from earlier lists? In this study, we investigated the relationship between maintenance deficits and susceptibility to interference in a group of 20 aphasic patients characterized with weak semantic or weak phonological STM. Patients and matched control participants performed a modified item-recognition task designed to elicit semantic or phonological interference from list items located one, two, or three trials back (). Controls demonstrated significant effects of interference in both versions of the task. Interference in patients was predicted by the type and severity of their STM deficit; that is, shorter semantic spans were associated with greater semantic interference and shorter phonological spans were associated with greater phonological interference. We interpret these results through a new perspective, the reactivation hypothesis, and we discuss their importance for accounts emphasizing the contribution of maintenance mechanisms for STM impairments in aphasia as well as susceptibility to interference. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This fMRI study investigates how audiovisual integration differs for verbal stimuli that can be matched at a phonological level and nonverbal stimuli that can be matched at a semantic level. Subjects were presented simultaneously with one visual and one auditory stimulus and were instructed to decide whether these stimuli referred to the same object or not. Verbal stimuli were simultaneously presented spoken and written object names, and nonverbal stimuli were photographs of objects simultaneously presented with naturally occurring object sounds. Stimulus differences were controlled by including two further conditions that paired photographs of objects with spoken words and object sounds with written words. Verbal matching, relative to all other conditions, increased activation in a region of the left superior temporal sulcus that has previously been associated with phonological processing. Nonverbal matching, relative to all other conditions, increased activation in a right fusiform region that has previously been associated with structural and conceptual object processing. Thus, we demonstrate how brain activation for audiovisual integration depends on the verbal content of the stimuli, even when stimulus and task processing differences are controlled. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose: There is a paucity of information detailing the phonological skills of Spanish-English bilingual children and comparing that information to information concerning the phonological skills of predominantly English-speaking (PE) and predominantly Spanish-speaking (PS) children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between amount of output (i.e., percentage of time each language was spoken) in each language and phonological skills in Spanish-English bilingual children and PE and PS children. Method: Fifteen typically developing children, ranging in age from 5;0 (years;months) to 5;5 (mean = 5;2), participated in the study. The participants consisted of 5 PE speakers, 5 PS speakers, and 5 bilingual (Spanish-English) speakers. A single-word assessment was used to gather information on phonological skills (consonant accuracy, type and frequency of substitutions, frequency of occurrence of phonological patterns [e.g., cluster reduction], accuracy of syllable types [e.g., CV, CVC, CCV, etc.]), and type and rate of cross-linguistic effects. Results: The results indicated that there was no significant correlation between amount of output in each language and phonological skills either in the Spanish skills of PS children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers or in the English skills of PE children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. In addition, there was no significant difference in segmental accuracy, syllabic accuracy, or percentage of occurrence of phonological patterns between either the Spanish skills of PS children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers or the English skills of PE children and Spanish- English bilingual speakers. Finally, the children showed a limited number of cross-linguistic effects. Clinical Implications: Results from this study indicate no link between parent estimates of language output and phonological skill and demonstrate that Spanish-English bilingual children will have commensurate, although not identical, phonological skills as compared to age-matched PS and PE children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary goal of this study was to compare three theoretical accounts of reading disability (RD) by simultaneously studying phonological, visual, and temporal processing skills. Adults with and without RD were compared on measures of phonological processing with the Auditory Analysis Test (AAT) and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (WRMT-R) Word Attack subtest. Visual processing was assessed with the Useful Field of View test (UFOV®) and the Frequency Doubling Technology Perimeter (FDT). The Repetition Test was used to evaluate temporal processing skills. Adults with RD evidenced poorer phonological and temporal processing skills than did adults without RD, but no significant differences between the groups were found in visual processing. Future research is needed to clarify the relations among phonological, visual, and temporal skills and the roles they play in RD. The trajectory and co-existence of deficits throughout development, as well as how specifically such impairments affect reading, warrant further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial evidence from studies of English-speaking dyslexic children's spelling suggests that these individuals have a persistent impairment in representing the phonological structure and content of words in writing. In contrast, several studies of German dyslexic children (Landerl & Wimmer, 2000) suggest that, among learners of transparent orthographies, the above impairment is transient and resolves by the end of grade 2; instead dyslexic spelling is characterised by a persistent impairment in learning inconsistent spelling patterns. In order to determine whether phonological spelling difficulties are transient among dyslexic spellers of other transparent orthographies, we analysed phonological accuracy in the spellings of 43 dyslexic children, 43 age-matched control and 43 spelling-matched control children attending primary schools in Prague. Czech dyslexic children presented an interesting test case because Czech has a transparent orthography. Czech dyslexics as old as 11 years (grade 5) continued to produce high rates of phonologically inaccurate spellings relative to their age peers; thus their difficulties with phonological representation in spelling had not resolved. This pattern is consistent with findings from studies of English-speaking dyslexics, and it suggests that orthographic depth may impact less dramatically on the manifestation of dyslexia than has been proposed previously. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of a phonological awareness training programme (PAT) which is based on the use of analogies for learning to read and spell new words. The programme adopts a genertative skills approach to reading and spelling. An evaluation study of the PAT programme took place in Buckinghamshire in 1993/4 together with a follow-up study in 1995. The results of these studies suggested that phonological awareness training which incorporates reading, spelling, and writing can form a useful part of a literacy programme for children with reading difficulties. Significant improvements in reading and spelling were found in the children who had followed that PAT programme. In addition to this, phonological skills such as rhyme fluency and spoonerisms, as measured by the Phonological Assessment Battery (PhAB), also showed significant improvement. The problems of helping children to develop syllabification skills is discussed. A description is given of our current developmental work on a rime based syllabification programme for children with specific learning difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports an extended ‘case series’ of studies comparing performance of three age groups of dyslexic and matched control children on primitive skills. The dyslexic children showed deficits in most of the skills, with fundamental deficits (worse performance than reading age controls) on phonological skill, naming speed, bead threading and on some balance tasks. Furthermore, there was no evidence of subtypes of dyslexic modalities. The results; which have considerable theoretical and applied significance, demonstrate that the difficulties of dyslexic children are not limited to phonological skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The phonological working memory skills of Persian speaking CWS and CWNS were examined using three nonword repetition tasks. • Effects of the characteristics of nonword repetition tasks on children's performance in two groups were studied. • The best scoring method that distinguished the two groups was determined. • CWSwere less successful than CWNS in various aspects of the nonword repetition task. • A task with low wordlike and more phonological complex stimuli better distinguishes between the two groups. The purpose of the study was to examine the performance of Persian speaking children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) on three nonword repetition tasks, while also focusing on which task and scoring method best differentiates the two groups of children. Thirty CWS and 30 CWNS between the ages of 5;0 to 6;6 completed three nonword repetition tasks that varied in complexity. Each task was scored using two methods: nonwords correct and phonemes correct. Between-group differences in performance on each task were examined, along with disfluencies for CWS and the task and scoring method that best differentiated the CWS and CWNS. The findings revealed that, across all three nonword repetition tasks, the CWS consistently produced fewer nonwords correct and phonemes correct than the CWNS group at virtually all syllable lengths. The CWS produced more disfluencies on longer nonwords than shorter nonwords in all three nonword repetition tasks. The nonword repetition task with lower wordlikeness and more phonologically complex items best differentiated the two groups of children. Findings further revealed that discriminative accuracy was highest for scoring based on the number of phonemes produced correctly. Findings provide further evidence to suggest that CWS may have difficulty with phonological working memory and/or phonological processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study sets out to address two fundamental questions in the reading of continuous texts: Whether semantic and phonological information from upcoming words can be accessed during natural reading. In the present study we investigated parafoveal processing during the reading of Korean sentences, manipulating semantic and phonological information from parafoveal preview words. In addition to the first evidence for a semantic preview effect in Korean, we found that Korean readers have stronger and more long-lasting phonological than semantic activation from parafoveal words in second-pass reading. The present study provides an example that human mind can flexibly adjust processing priority to different types of information based on the linguistic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]