Offline Improvement in Learning to Read a Novel Orthography Depends on Direct Letter Instruction

Abstract

Improvement in performance after the end of the training session, termed ''Offline improvement,'' has been shown in procedural learning tasks. We examined whether Offline improvement in learning a novel orthography depends on the type of reading instruction. Forty-eight adults received multisession training in reading nonsense words, written in an artificial script. Participants were trained in one of three conditions: alphabetical words preceded by direct letter instruction (LetterAlph); alphabetical words with whole-word instruction (Word-Alph); and nonalphabetical (arbitrary) words with whole-word instruction (Word-Arb). Offline improvement was found only for the LetterAlph group. Moreover, correlation with a standardized measure of word reading ability showed that good readers trained in the Letter-Alph group exhibit greater Offline improvement, whereas good readers trained in the Word-Arb group showed greater Within-session improvement during training. These results suggest that different consolidation processes and learning mechanisms were involved in each group. We argue that providing a short block of direct letter instruction prior to training resulted in increased involvement of procedural learning mechanisms during training.

Idea units in notes and summaries for read texts by keyboard and pencil in middle childhood students with specific learning disabilities: Cognitive and brain findings

“…On the one hand, brain research has shown that letter formation facilitates letter perception in words and thus reading words, both in young children [22–24,35] and adults [11,23,33,34]. Instructional research has also demonstrated that letter formation in English and character formation in Chinese, can transfer to improved word reading [7,10,57], presumably because perception of letter or character in word context is facilitated by formation of them in handwriting.…”

BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience

“…The first studies showed that explicit teaching of print-to-sound correspondences facilitates novel word reading in the unfamiliar script (e.g., Bishop, 1964, in adults;Jeffrey & Samuels, 1967, in children), thus supporting the phonic method. Follow-up studies were mostly run in adults (who could be extensively trained and who were quickly able to use a completely new alphabet) and largely confirmed the first results (e.g., Baron & Hodge, 1978;Bitan & Booth, 2012;Bitan & Karni, 2003Bitan, Manor, Morocz, & Karni, 2005;Brooks, 1977Brooks, , 1978Yoncheva, Wise, & McCandliss, 2015). In the same line, artificial characters were used to examine the impact of letter sound or letter name knowledge (e.g., Chisholm & Knafle, 1975;Jenkins, Bausell & Jenkins, 1972;Samuels, 1972) and phonetic feature knowledge (e.g., Byrne, 1984;Byrne & Carroll, 1989) on reading acquisition.…”

The Role of Prior Knowledge in Morphological Learning in an Artificial Second Language

“…At the highest level, prior knowledge may take the form of general linguistic or meta-linguistic knowledge. Support for the role of this type of prior knowledge comes from research showing that individual differences in phonological awareness, vocabulary, and reading skill are predictive of both general word learning success and, more specifically, the time course of novel word consolidation (e.g., Ben-Zion et al, 2019;Bitan & Booth, 2012;James et al, 2019;Landi et al, 2018).…”