No abstract

This study examined the common and distinct contributions of context-free and context reading skill to reading comprehension and the contributions of context-free reading skill and reading comprehension to context fluency. The 113 4th-grade participants were measured in reading comprehension, read aloud a folktale, and read aloud the folktale's words in a random list. Fluency was scaled as speed (words read correctly in 1 min) and time (seconds per correct word). Relative to list fluency, context fluency was a stronger predictor of comprehension. List fluency and comprehension each uniquely predicted context fluency, but their relative contributions depended on how fluency was scaled (time or speed). Results support the conclusion that word level processes contribute relatively more to fluency at lower levels while comprehension contributes relatively more at higher levels.

To test the effect of linguistic experience on the perception of a cue that is known to be effective in distinguishing between [1') and [I) in English, 21 Japanese and 39 American adults were tested on discrimination of a set of synthetic speech-like stimuli. The 13 "speech" stimuli in this set varied in the initial stationary frequency of the third formant (F3) and its subsequent transition into the vowel over a range sufficient to produce the perception of [1' a) and [I a) for American subjects and to produce [1' a) (which is not in phonemic contrast to [I a)) for Japanese subjects. Discrimination tests of a comparable set of stimuli consisting of the isolated F3 components provided a "nonspeech" control. For Americans, the discrimination of the speech stimuli was nearly categorical, i.e., comparison pairs which were identified as different phonemes were discriminated with high accuracy, while pairs which were identified as the same phoneme were discriminated relatively poorly. In comparison, discrimination of speech stimuli by Japanese subjects was only slightly better than chance for all comparison pairs. Performance on nonspeech stimuli, however, was virtually identical for Japanese and American subjects; both groups showed highly accurate discrimination of all comparison pairs. These results suggest that the effect of linguistic experience is specific to perception in the "speech mode." One way to examine the effect of linguistic experience on the perception of speech is to compare the discrimination of phonetic segments by two groups of speakers: one group speaks a language in

In three experiments involving 17 groups, the amount and organization of recall of word lists varied with the type of incidental task performed by 6"s during presentation of the list. All 5"s heard a randomized list of highstrength primary word associates. When the incidental task required using the word as a semantic unit (rating the word as to its pleasantness), recall and organization were equivalent to those of a control group with no incidental task. When the incidental task involved the word as an object (checking for certain letters or estimating the number of letters in the word), recall and organization were greatly reduced. The effects were unaltered by incidental-plus-recall instructions, doubling presentation time, and presenting the list twice.

No abstract