In three structural priming experiments, we investigated whether deaf and hearing writers differ in the processes and representations underlying written language production. Experiment 1 showed that deaf writers of Mandarin Chinese exhibited comparable extents of structural priming and comparable lexical boosts, suggesting that syntactic encoding…

This study examined the contribution of the constructs of orthographic processing (orthographic choice and orthographic choice in context), syntactic processing (grammaticality and sentence integrity), and verbal working memory (two reading span indicators) to written Chinese composition (narration, explanation, and argumentation) in 129…

This essay is about the improbable emergence of written language six millennia ago that gave rise to the even more improbable, highly sophisticated reading brain of the twenty-first century. How it emerged and what it comprises--both in its most basic iteration in the very young reader and in its most elaborated iteration in the expert reader--is…

Recent neurological breakthroughs in our understanding of the Critical Period Hypothesis and prosody may suggest strategies on how phonics instruction could improve L2 language learning and in particular phoneme/grapheme decoding. We therefore conducted a randomised controlled-trial on the application of prosody and phonics techniques, to improve…

Apraxic agraphia is a writing disorder due to a loss or lack of access to motor engrams that program the movements necessary to produce letters. Clinical and functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the neural network responsible for writing includes the superior parietal region and the dorsolateral and medial premotor cortex. Recent…

"School-Age Language Intervention: Evidence-based Practices" explains how to teach the language and literacy skills, strategies, and underlying processes needed for educational success. This book brings together an array of experts to provide the latest practical and evidence-based guidance to school speech-language pathologists.…

In spoken language comprehension, syntactic parsing decisions interact with prosodic phrasing, which is directly affected by phrase length. Here we used ERPs to examine whether a similar effect holds for the on-line processing of written sentences during silent reading, as suggested by theories of "implicit prosody." Ambiguous Korean sentence…

In this experiment, syntactic constraints on the retrieval of orthography were investigated using homophones embedded in sentence contexts. Participants typed auditorily presented sentences that included a contextually appropriate homophone that either shared part of speech with its homophone competitor (i.e., was syntactically unambiguous) or had…

The purpose of this study was to examine the character identification strategies of Chinese children during their oral reading of a continuous text. Eighteen second graders' oral reading of a story, as well as an interview about their decoding strategies, were audiotaped and transcribed. The results generally converged with those of previous oral…

Concludes that readers recall syntactic subjects very poorly. Suggests that to understand more precisely how readers represent such subjects in memory, new and rich models of language and of possible domains in text will be needed. (FL)

Analyzes intermediate English-as-a-second-language learners' (N=63) written responses to high and low cognitive level questions. Results indicate that although the degree of linguistic inaccuracy remained stable, the higher order of cognition increased both the amount and the order of syntactic complexity of written English responses. (Author/CB)

Describes two studies of which one analyzes syntactic complexity in writing samples by secondary and postsecondary students, while the other correlates the syntactic dimensions revealed by the former with measures of cognitive style. Correlations indicate an association between complexity and analytic cognitive style. (MES)

Traditional research on the written language of hearing-impaired persons has tended to support a position of deviant language processing in such individuals. The major reason for such findings has been directly related to the lack of appropriate control groups. Recent studies which have emphasized the comparison of the language of hearing-impaired…

From the perspective of a reading consultant, the processes of thinking and reading apply to efficient learning. Language teachers should know: (1) the difference between surface structure and deep meaning of an utterance, (2) the importance of "affect" on learning: the reader's personal involvement with the material and with its presentation,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The nine titles deal with the following topics: (1) the effects of syntactic differences between oral and written discourse on the reading comprehension of second and fifth grade students; (2) the effects of a sentence combining…