The processing of morphologically complex words has been studied in many languages, leading to a variety of theoretical accounts. Prime type, individual differences, and cross-linguistic effects have emerged as potential factors in morphological processing, but the findings so far have been inconclusive, especially for young children. This study…

Individual differences in reading performance between children appear from the onset of literacy acquisition. One possible explanation for this variability is the influence of inhibition in reading ability, a topic that has received very little research attention. Nevertheless, children often make guessing errors characterized by replacing a word…

The role of morphology in learning to read can vary widely across languages and is related to the extent to which the morphological system is a dominant feature of the specific language. The present study focuses on Arabic, a Semitic language written in an "abjad" (consonantal writing system) and characterized by rich morphological…

This study compared the sentence hyperbole comprehension performance of Chinese poor readers with various levels of arithmetic proficiency. A total of 168 Chinese poor readers in Grade 1 were recruited, and their nonverbal intelligence, verbal working memory, Chinese receptive vocabulary, Chinese grammatical knowledge, character reading and…

A substantial body of research has noted morphological priming effects in visual word recognition in deep orthographies, but it is still unclear whether similar effects exist in transparent orthographies. In the present experiment, we investigated the development of morphological decomposition in visual word recognition in the phonologically…

This lexical decision eye-tracking study investigated whether horizontal and vertical readings elicit comparable behavioral patterns and whether reading directions modulate lexical processes. Response times and eye movements were recorded during a lexical decision task with Japanese bimorphemic compound words presented vertically. The data were…

Spelling accuracy and time course was investigated in a sample of 100 Norwegian 6th grade students completing a standardized spelling-to-dictation task. Students responded by keyboard with accurate recordings of response-onset latency (RT) and inter-keypress interval (IKI). We determined effects of a number of child-level cognitive ability…

Emotional inferences are conclusions that a reader draws about the emotional state of a story's protagonist. In this study, we examined whether children and adults draw emotional inferences while reading short stories or listening to an aural presentation of short stories. We used an online method that assesses inferences during reading with a…

A growing body of literature suggests that response latency, the amount of time it takes an individual to respond to an item, may be an important factor to consider when using assessment data to estimate the ability of an individual. Considering that tests of passage and list fluency are being adapted to a computer administration format, it is…

Previewing answer-choice options before finishing reading the text is a widely employed test-taking behavior. In the present study we examined whether previewing is related to item response accuracy and response time, using data from Chinese learners of varying English proficiency levels and English native speakers. We examined eye movement…

The comparison between spoken and handwritten production in picture naming tasks represents an important source of information for building models of cognitive processes involved in writing. Studies using this methodology systematically reported longer latencies for handwritten than for spoken production. To uncover the origin of this difference…

Linguistic knowledge, cognitive ability, and instruction influence how adults acquire a second orthography yet it remains unclear how different forms of instruction influence grain size sensitivity and subsequent decoding skill and speed. Thirty-seven monolingual, literate English-speaking adults were trained on a novel artificial orthography…

In an opaque orthography like English, phonological coding errors are a prominent feature of dyslexia. In a transparent orthography like Spanish, reading difficulties are characterized by slower reading speed rather than reduced accuracy. In previous research, the reading speed deficit was revealed by asking children to read lists of words.…

This study examines the effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding by high-intermediate level Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners. The results of the study suggest that the CFL learners tested have a well-developed semantic pathway to recognition; however, their phonological pathway is not yet a reliable means…

The purpose of this study was to examine how executive function skills in verbal and nonverbal auditory tasks are related to early reading skills in beginning readers. Kindergarteners (N = 41, aged 5 years) completed verbal (phonemes) and nonverbal (environmental sounds) Continuous Performance tasks yielding measures of executive function (misses,…