Visual Word Recognition and Reading
Visual word recognition studies how printed words are identified and how their spelling is mapped onto sound and meaning during reading.
Definition
The recognition of words from print and the processes mapping orthography onto phonology and meaning during reading.
Scope
This topic covers the identification of printed words, the routes from spelling to sound (lexical and sublexical), the effects of frequency, regularity, and neighborhood, and the computational models that account for skilled reading aloud and its breakdowns. It describes the representations and models rather than methods of reading instruction.
Core questions
- How are printed words identified and mapped onto sound and meaning?
- Are there separate routes for regular words and exception words?
- What factors (frequency, regularity, neighborhood) modulate naming and decision times?
Key concepts
- dual-route model
- grapheme-to-phoneme conversion
- regularity effect
- orthographic neighborhood
- word-superiority effect
Key theories
- Dual-route cascaded (DRC) model
- Coltheart and colleagues' model with a lexical route for known words and a rule-based grapheme-to-phoneme route, accounting for regularity effects and acquired dyslexias.
- Connectionist (triangle) model
- Seidenberg and McClelland's distributed model in which a single learned mapping among orthography, phonology, and semantics handles both regular and exception words.
- Interactive-activation account
- The feature-letter-word activation framework that explains context effects such as the word-superiority effect in letter perception.
History
The interactive-activation model of 1981 established connectionist word recognition; the contrast between the dual-route cascaded model and the connectionist triangle model has structured the field since the late 1980s.
Debates
- Dual-route versus single-mechanism reading
- Whether reading aloud requires two distinct routes (lexical and sublexical), as in DRC, or arises from a single learned mapping, as in connectionist models.
Key figures
- Max Coltheart
- Mark Seidenberg
- James McClelland
Related topics
Seminal works
- coltheart2001
- seidenbergmcclelland1989
- mcclellandrumelhart1981
Frequently asked questions
- What is the regularity effect?
- Words with typical spelling-to-sound correspondences (such as 'mint') are read aloud faster than exception words (such as 'pint'), a key finding that models of reading must explain.