World languages are characterised by various types of phonological regularities. Some of those are encoded in the mappings between spelling, meaning, and sound, others are present within sequences of sounds. Existing theoretical models of reading that are built to mimic readers’ minds are remarkably underspecified in the level of phonological detail. This project was designed to advance our understanding of the nature of phonological representations that readers use when they produce a vocal response.
A. Our work has shed light on aspects of phonological representations used for reading. We have shown that fine-grain phonological information beyond a single sound (for example, that vocal folds vibrate when producing the sound /b/ vs /p/) exerts influence on reading aloud in two languages with very different phonological systems, English and Russian. In a series experiments using different paradigms (masked priming, word and nonword reading aloud, lexical decision), we have shown that this influence is associated with several types of phonological information (e.g. where in the vocal tract the sound is produced, how long the sound lasts), and may depend on the how language’s phonological and orthographic spaces are structured.
B. Our work has also advanced our understanding of how phonological information is exploited. A common assumption in the field is that an individual’s phonological knowledge is stable and can be characterised precisely by administering the nonword reading task. Our findings challenge this assumption: we show that the exploitation of phonological information is dependent on a variety of factors, including characteristics of individuals, structure of nonwords, and testing conditions. Our findings raise important methodological questions about the use and interpretation of the nonword reading task when assessing people’s phonological knowledge. Further, they have implication for situations when the reading aloud task is used to shed light on our linguistic knowledge (in science), to diagnose language impairments (in the clinic), or to assess learning (in schools).
C. Using cutting-edge tools from distributional semantic modelling, we characterised interactions between sound, letter, and meaning regularities, and measured individual differences in people’s sensitivity to these regularities. Our findings suggest that prior experience with language influences the ability to assimilate these from exposure.
Overall, our results challenge and inform existing theories of reading aloud that do not take fine-grained phonological information into account and do not describe how this information interacts with regularities on other levels. Our results also bridge reading aloud and speech production that are traditionally considered separate research domains.
