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Who are the noisiest neighbors in the hood? Using error analyses to study the acquisition of letter-position processing
Marinus, Eva Kezilas, Yvette Kohnen, Saskia Regina Robidoux, Serje Castles, Anne
Marinus, Eva
Kezilas, Yvette
Kohnen, Saskia Regina
Robidoux, Serje
Castles, Anne
Abstract
This research examines the acquisition of letter-position processing. Study 1 investigated letter-position processing in Grades 1–6 and adult readers, using the occurrence of specific error types as the outcome measure. Between Grades 1 and 2, there was a shift from making more other-word to making more letter-position errors. This shift was a function of reading proficiency, not of years of reading instruction. Based on the multiple-route model of reading development (Grainger, Lété, Bertand, Dufau, & Ziegler, 2012), we argue that the fact that children make fewer other-word errors (i.e., mostly letter-identity errors) opens up the opportunity for them to make “the more advanced” letter-position errors. Finally, skilled adult readers still made fewer letter-position errors than typical readers in Grade 6, suggesting that the acquisition process is not finalized by the end of primary school. In Study 2, we directly compared letter-position processing with letter-identity processing. Thirty children in Grade 3 and 30 children in Grade 4 read aloud words with and without higher-frequency distractors. Children more often misread a word with a higher-frequency distractor than without such a distractor and this effect was stronger for below-average than for above-average readers. Converging with the results of Study 1, we found that a letter-position distractor is more disruptive than a letter-identity distractor. These results confirm that the acquisition of letter-position processing lags behind of that of letter-identity processing. The results are discussed within the framework of the Lexical Tuning Hypothesis (Castles, Davis, Cavalot, & Forster, 2007), which stresses the importance of feedback between letter (identity and position) coding and (developing) orthographic representations.
Keywords
reading development, reading performance, letter-position processing, letter-identity processing, error analyses
Date
2018
Type
Journal article
Journal
Book
Volume
44
Issue
9
Page Range
1384-1396
Article Number
ACU Department
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled
Notes
© 2018 American Psychological Association