Chang, Ya-Ning and Taylor, Joanne and Rastle, Kathleen and Monaghan, Padraic John (2017) Exploring the relations between oral language and reading instruction in a computational model of reading. In: Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society :. Cognitive Science Society, Austin, Tx, pp. 1740-1745. ISBN 9780991196760
Chang_5_8.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.
Download (656kB)
Abstract
To become a proficient reader, children have to learn mappings between print, sound and meaning. There is debate over whether reading instruction should focus on the relations between print and sound, as in phonics, or on the relationship between print and meaning, as in sight word reading. In a study where participants learned a novel artificial orthography, Taylor, Davis and Rastle (submitted) compared print to sound focused or print to meaning focused reading training, demonstrating that sound training was superior for learning to read. However, a benefit from sound focused training is likely dependent on prior acquisition of effective sound to meaning relations of words. To explore this issue, we developed a connectionist model of reading. We exposed the model to a sound or a meaning focused training, but varied the model’s pre-acquired oral language skills. The simulation results showed that proficiency in oral language is a determinant of the advantage of print to sound focused reading training, indicating that reading training should address both oral language skills and print to sound mappings.