Tongue-twister effects in the silent reading of hearing and deaf college students

Hanson, Vicki L.; Goodell, Elizabeth W.; Perfetti, Charles A.

doi:10.1016/0749-596x(91)90039-m

Cited by 80 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Semantic-judgment response times (RTs) were longer for the tongue twisters. This effect replicates with deaf participants, using both tongue twisters (Hanson, Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991) and ASL "finger-fumblers" (Klima & Bellugi, 1979), and with Chinese readers (Perfetti et al, 1992;Zhang & Perfetti, 1993).These findings suggest that phonological representations in reading are similar to overt speech, and may be less abstract than is often assumed.…”

Section: The Evidence Thus Farsupporting

confidence: 64%

What the reader’s eye tells the mind’s ear: Silent reading activates inner speech

Abramson

Goldinger

1997

Perception & Psychophysics

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Although copious research has investigated the role of phonology in reading, little research has investigated the precise nature of the entailed speech representations. The present study examined the similarity of "inner speech" in reading to overt speech. Two lexical decision experiments (in which participants gave speeded word/nonword classifications to letter strings) assessed the effects of implicit variations in vowel and word-initial consonant length. Responses were generally slower for phonetically long stimuli than for phonetically short stimuli, despite equal orthographic lengths. Moreover, the phonetic length effects displayed principled interactions with common factors known to affect lexical decisions, such as word frequency and the similarity of words to nonwords. Both phonetic length effects were stronger among slower readers. The data suggest that acoustic representations activated in silent reading are best characterized as inner speech rather than as abstract phonological codes.

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Section: The Evidence Thus Farsupporting

confidence: 64%

What the reader’s eye tells the mind’s ear: Silent reading activates inner speech

Abramson

Goldinger

1997

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…The behavioral data demonstrated a tongue-twister effect not only on the time it takes to silently read sentences, but also on comprehension performance. Although previous behavioral studies have shown that it is more difficult to make semantic acceptability judgments on tongue-twister sentences (Hanson et al, 1991;McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982;Zhang & Perfetti, 1993), it could be argued that such a task involves processes and strategies that are not like those used in normal reading or are less demanding than those used in normal reading. The present study extends the generality of the visual tongue-twister effect on comprehension performance to a more natural reading situation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…/b/ and /p/), but which differ in voicing (McCutchen, Bell, France, & Perfetti, 1991;McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982). In addition, congenitally deaf readers show comparable effects in semantic acceptability judgments (Hanson, Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991), suggesting that the role of phonology in reading is not simply a residual effect of learning to read with the support of auditory input. In summary, the slowing of the reading process by phonological similarity suggests that phonological or articulatory codes are being activated in normal reading.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Brain imaging of tongue-twister sentence comprehension: Twisting the tongue and the brain

2003

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This study used fMRI to investigate the neural basis of the tongue-twister effect in a sentence comprehension task. Participants silently read sentences equated for the syntactic structure and the lexical frequency of the constituent words, but differing in the proportion of words that shared similar initial phonemes. The manipulation affected not only the reading times and comprehension performance, but also the amount of activation seen in a number of language-related cortical areas. The effect was not restricted to cortical areas known to be involved in articulatory speech programming or rehearsal processes (the inferior frontal gyrus and anterior insula), but also extended to areas associated with other aspects of language processing (inferior parietal cortex) associated with phonological processing and storage.

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“…various groups made semantic acceptability judgments on sentences (American students who were deaf, Hanson, Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991; Chinese students, Zhang & Perfetti, 1993; and American students with normal hearing, McCutchen & Perfetti, 1982).…”

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confidence: 99%

At-lexical, articulatory interference in silent reading: The “upstream” tongue-twister effect

Robinson

Katayama

1997

Memory & Cognition

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In two experiments, we investigated the interpretation and boundary conditions of the tonguetwister (TT) effect in silent reading. Previously, McCutchen, Bell, France, and Perfetti (1991) observed a TT effect when students made semantic acceptability judgments on sentences, but not when they made lexical decisions on lists of words. Using similar methodology in Experiment 1, along with two changes (using "better" TTs and longer word lists), we observed a TT effect in a lexical decision task. In Experiment 2, a memory span task revealed that students recalled fewer words from TT lists than from control lists. These results suggest that the basic mechanism of the TT effect may be articulatory, rather than working-memory, interference that occurs during lexical access and resurfaces postlexically, inhibiting efforts to maintain the temporal order of several words,The debate over the functions of phonology in adults' silent reading has raged on over the past several years, It has become "the single dominant theoretical issue in the psychology ofreading" (Crowder & Wagner, 1992, p. 157), Recently, Berent andPerfetti (1995) stated that the most important function of phonology is assisting sentence comprehension. Phonology facilitates this process by helping retain the temporal order of words in working memory so that they can be syntactically and semantically analyzed (Johnston, Thompson, Fletcher-Flinn, & Holligan, 1995). Another possible function of phonology is in the identification of isolated words, by activating phonological representations to access lexical meanings. Thus, phonology may serve two functions in reading: (1) identification of the printed word and (2) temporary storage of several words while sentence comprehension takes place. Although researchers are in agreement regarding the latter function, the former function remains controversial (Zhang & Perfetti, 1993). The Tongue-Twister EffectOne window that may shed some light on this issue is the tongue-twister (TT) paradigm. The rationale here is that if silent reading is dependent on phonology, readers will take longer to read sentences that contain words that share similar initial phonemes (e.g., "The Swiss wristwatch strap shop shuts soon.") than they would to read sentences that contain a natural mix of initial phonemes (e.g., "The brown bearskin rug man left town.") because the former are more difficult to articulate (Haber & Haber, 1982). This TT effect has been demonstrated in studies in which subjects simply read sentences silently (Haber & Haber, 1982), in which subjects read and were required to comprehend the sentences (Ayres, 1984), and in which Correspondence should be addressed to D. H. Robinson. School of Education. University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD 57069 (e-mail: drobinso@sundance.usd.edu).various groups made semantic acceptability judgments on sentences (American students who were deaf, Hanson, Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991; Chinese students, Zhang & Perfetti, 1993; and American students with normal hearing, McCutchen & Perfetti,...

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Tongue-twister effects in the silent reading of hearing and deaf college students

Cited by 80 publications

References 25 publications

What the reader’s eye tells the mind’s ear: Silent reading activates inner speech

What the reader’s eye tells the mind’s ear: Silent reading activates inner speech

Brain imaging of tongue-twister sentence comprehension: Twisting the tongue and the brain

At-lexical, articulatory interference in silent reading: The “upstream” tongue-twister effect

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