Orthography and Modality Influence Speech Production in Adults and Children

Abstract

Purpose: The acquisition of literacy skills influences the perception and production of spoken language. We examined if orthography influences implicit processing in speech production in child readers and in adult readers with low and high reading proficiency. Method: Children (n = 17), adults with typical reading skills (n = 17), and adults demonstrating low reading proficiency (n = 18) repeated or read aloud nonwords varying in orthographic transparency. Analyses of implicit linguistic processing (segmental accuracy and speech movement stability) were conducted. The accuracy and articulatory stability of productions of the nonwords were assessed before and after repetition or reading.Results: Segmental accuracy results indicate that all 3 groups demonstrated greater learning when they were able to read, rather than just hear, the nonwords. Speech movement results indicate that, for adults with poor reading skills, exposure to the nonwords in a transparent spelling reduces the articulatory variability of speech production. Reading skill was correlated with speech movement stability in the groups of adults. Conclusions: In children and adults, orthography interacts with speech production; all participants integrate orthography into their lexical representations. Adults with poor reading skills do not use the same reading or speaking strategies as children with typical reading skills.

Orthography and speech production in children with good or poor reading skills

“…Lower STI values are indicative of a smaller deviation from the underlying pattern (i.e., greater stability; Smith, Goffman, Zelaznik, Ying, & McGillem, 1995). Previous studies have demonstrated that both PCC and STI can quantify the progression of motor speech development and directly index the influences of syntactic, lexical, phonological, and orthographic characteristics on implicit processing (e.g., Goffman, Gerken, & Lucchesi, 2007;Heisler et al, 2010;McMillan et al, 2009;Saletta et al, 2015Saletta et al, , 2016Smith & Goffman, 1998).…”

“…Traditionally, increased articulatory stability is considered to be indicative of more skillful and efficient processing within the individual, of defining healthy speakers versus clinical populations, and of responding to lower task demands (e.g., Brumbach & Goffman, 2014;Goffman & Smith, 1999;Green, Moore, Higashikawa, & Steeve, 2000;Kleinow & Smith, 2000;Nip & Green, 2013;Walsh & Smith, 2011). Our previous works indicated that adults, both typical and low-proficiency readers, demonstrated increased phonetic accuracy when enabled to read, rather than just hear, nonword stimuli (Saletta et al, 2015(Saletta et al, , 2016. Adults with low reading proficiency also demonstrated increased speech movement stability when enabled to read the nonword stimuli in an orthographically transparent spelling, rather than in an orthographically opaque spelling.…”

“…Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to expand earlier work, which revealed a bidirectional relationship between orthography and speech motor output in adults. In this relationship, speech production changes in response to manipulations of modality and orthographic transparency in adults who are good or poor readers (Saletta et al, 2015(Saletta et al, , 2016. However, this story is incomplete.…”

“…Second, we inquired whether earlier findings (Saletta et al, 2015(Saletta et al, , 2016) with adults would be connected with children who present with good or poor reading skills. Adults experienced changes to their speech production when exposed to the written form of nonwords.…”

“…Saletta , Goffman, and Brentari (2015) investigated the influences of orthography and modality on speech production in adults, and found that speakers' accuracy increased as a function of modality (i.e., reading the nonwords aloud as opposed to just hearing and repeating them). Saletta, Goffman, and Hogan (2016) investigated those same phenomena in adults with varying reading skills and in children with good reading skills. These authors found that the speech of adults with poor reading skills was lower in speech movement stability when reading nonwords presented with an opaque spelling.…”