One line of research explores the processes involved in spelling development, in collaboration with Dr Anna Samara. Spelling is a complex and challenging task, particularly in orthographies where letters and sounds do not have one-to-one correspondence (e.g., in English, vowel sounds can be spelled in as many as five different ways!). In line with increasing evidence that memorisation and explicit learning skills do not suffice for competent spelling skills to develop, we investigate spellers’ frequency-based sensitivity: For example, can beginner spellers pick up on untaught orthographic conventions (e.g. gz and dz are illegal spellings of frequent word-final sound combinations in English; *bagz, *padz) from simple text exposure and what are the computational mechanisms at play? We address these questions using artificial lexicons, i.e., novel words which exemplify spelling patterns akin to those seen in natural orthographies. We incidentally expose participants to these words and subsequently, ask them to make judgments about unseen words which either follow or violate the novel spelling patterns. Using these methods, we have shown that frequency statistics do have an influence on children’s spelling preferences: For example, beginning spellers rapidly learn and generalise over novel orthographic conventions for permissible letter contexts (e.g., d and o cannot occur next to one another) even when this doesn’t affect pronunciation and they can do so from incidental exposure even when this does not affect the words' pronunciation (Singh, Wonnacott & Samara 2021). Current work led by Nicole and supervised by Liz and Prof Kate Nation explores the interplay between this type of orthographic learning and morphology.
Another line of research explores the interplay between spoken and written input and processing of spoken and written language. Jessie -supervised by Liz and Prof Kate Nation- is currently exploring this looking at the test case of learning and processing of classifiers in Mandarin.
Other work in reading development has been conducted in collaboration with Prof Kate Nation (Oxford) and Dr Holly Joseph (Reading). For example, we have shown experimentally (Joseph et al., 2014) that so-called “Age of Acquisition” effects in word reading (i.e., the fact that the age at which a word is first encountered affects the way it is later processed as a mature reader) can result from the order in which words are encountered during learning: if we teach participants new words via passive reading exposure, early exposed words are subsequently read differently from later exposed words. This speaks against accounts of reading development where Age-of-Acquisition results from changing brain plasticity in developing readers, or where these effects are an epiphenomenon due to other statistical properties (which were all controlled in the study). We have also conducted various eye-tracking experiments exploring children’s reading of syntactically ambiguous sentences (Wonnacott, Joseph, Adelman, & Nation, 2016; Joseph, Wonnacott & Nation 2021). We were particularly interested in the relationship between children’s online processing (as revealed by eye movements) and offline comprehension.
Researchers in the Language Learning Lab:
Nicole Law
Jessie Shi
Elizabeth Wonnacott
Alumni:
Daniela Singh
Anna Samara
