Rastle, Kathleen
(2017).
The acquisition of print-to-meaning links in reading: An investigation using novel writing systems.
[Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex:
UK Data Archive.
10.5255/UKDA-SN-852736
Reading is one of the most remarkable of our cognitive abilities. In a short space of time, most children go from painstakingly sounding out the individual symbols that make up words, to the rapid and seemingly automatic access to meaning from these symbols that skilled readers experience. Literacy has a profound impact on individuals, society, and the economy: amongst other things, it decreases dependency on state benefits and improves participation in the democratic process. Yet, unlike many other of our fundamental capacities (e.g. walking, talking), explicit instruction and practice are necessary in learning to read.
To comprehend text, young children learning alphabetic languages start by translating printed words into their spoken forms, and then they use their knowledge of spoken language to recover meaning. This print-to-sound-to-meaning mapping is often referred to as a sub-word process because words are broken down into letters that systematically correspond to sounds before meaning is accessed. Recent advances in the teaching of reading have shown that phonics instruction helps children to develop these sub-word reading skills. Most children then progress to using a more efficient whole-word process whereby meaning is accessed directly from print. However, we know that around 20% of 15-year-old children in the European Union fail to make this transition, and thus find it difficult to use reading to learn.
To date it has proven difficult to investigate which factors influence the development of sub-word (print-to-sound-to-meaning) and whole-word (print-to-meaning) reading strategies. This is partly because it is often difficult to diagnose which strategies people are using when they read, and partly because it is very challenging experimentally to vary aspects of a child's learning environment without introducing scientific confounds or ethical issues. To overcome these challenges we have developed a laboratory model of reading acquisition in which we study the processes by which adults learn to read new words written in unfamiliar symbols (i.e. an artificial orthography). This method enables us to manipulate exactly what is learned and how it is learned with perfect experimental control, and to observe changes in performance at regular time points using techniques at the leading edge of cognitive neuroscience. For these reasons, we believe that this new approach can contribute to our understanding of the factors that contribute to reading acquisition.
We will conduct three experiments in which adults learn to read artificial orthographies intensely over a period of two weeks. In Experiment 1, we will compare learning to read words written in an alphabetic script in which there is a systematic relationship between individual symbols and sounds with learning to read words written in a logographic script in which there is no systematic relationship between individual symbols and sounds. In Experiment 2, adults will learn to read words written in alphabetic scripts, but for one set of words they will concentrate on learning to read them aloud, whereas for another set of words they will concentrate on learning their meanings. In Experiment 3, we will examine the effect of spelling-to-sound irregularity on these learning processes. Before, early, and at the end of training, we will use behavioural and brain imaging techniques to diagnose the extent to which learners engage sub-word versus whole-word processes to accomplish the reading tasks.
Our results will provide vital knowledge about how a person's language skills, the writing system they are learning, and the way they are taught affect the development of sub-word and whole-word reading pathways. Thus, we anticipate that our findings will be of benefit in the middle to longer term in helping researchers to design evidence-based reading interventions and in informing literacy education and policy more generally.
Data description (abstract)
The data collection consists of behavioural measures of performance in laboratory studies in which adults learn to read in novel languages printed in artificial scripts. These studies vary the nature of instruction and the nature of the artificial writing systems. The behavioural measures include learning performance throughout a multiday training period on a variety of training tasks, performance at the end of training on a variety of test tasks, and baseline measures of language and literacy ability. Performance is expressed in both accuracy and reaction time. Text files include full documentation of the archive and methodology.
Data creators: |
Creator Name |
Affiliation |
ORCID (as URL) |
Rastle Kathleen |
Royal Holloway, University of London |
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Sponsors: |
Economic and Social Research Council
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Grant reference: |
ES/L002264/1
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Topic classification: |
Education Psychology
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Keywords: |
reading instruction, reading skills, learning, brain imaging, artificial language learning
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Project title: |
The acquisition of print-to-meaning links in reading: an investigation using novel writing systems
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Grant holders: |
Kathleen Rastle, Matt Davis, Jo Taylor
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Project dates: |
From | To |
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1 April 2014 | 31 March 2017 |
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Date published: |
11 Jul 2017 13:40
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Last modified: |
12 Jul 2017 07:29
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Collection period: |
Date from: | Date to: |
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1 April 2014 | 31 March 2017 |
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Geographical area: |
Surrey |
Country: |
United Kingdom |
Data collection method: |
The data in this collection consist of laboratory studies investigating adults' performance in learning to read novel vocabularies printed in artificial scripts.
Participants were monolingual adults between the ages of 18 and 40 who were native English speakers. They were sampled from the student and staff community at Royal Holloway University of London, and had no known language or reading disorders.
The sample was further characterised by a series of language and literacy measures. These included standard measures of reading, spelling, vocabulary, morpheme sensitivity, and phonological processing.
Novel vocabularies printed in artificial scripts were created. Participants learned to read these scripts through a series of tightly controlled training tasks, presented every day for a period of between two and three weeks. The nature of the training method was varied across experiments, as was the nature of the writing system being learned. Learning rates were monitored, and participants engaged in a series of behavioural and associated MRI tests at the end of training.
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Observation unit: |
Individual |
Kind of data: |
Numeric |
Type of data: |
Experimental data
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Resource language: |
English |
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Rights owners: |
Name |
Affiliation |
ORCID (as URL) |
Rastle Kathleen |
Royal Holloway, University of London |
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Contact: |
Name | Email | Affiliation | ORCID (as URL) |
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Rastle, Kathleen | Kathy.Rastle@rhul.ac.uk | Royal Holloway, University of London | Unspecified |
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Notes on access: |
Data are openly accessible through the Open Science Framework (see Related Resources).
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Publisher: |
UK Data Archive
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Last modified: |
12 Jul 2017 07:29
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