November 19, 2023
"Orthographic learning does not simply cease at the end of childhood, but its development and usage also continues in adulthood, as new words are acquired throughout our whole lifespan"
Key takeaways
- Overt reading, or reading aloud, resulted in improved recognition and recall of pseudowords when compared to reading silently
- Reading aloud improves the recognition and retention of new orthographic forms, suggesting its ability to improve memory
- Self-study practices that involve overt reading of texts and flash cards with new vocabulary items should be encouraged for better memory upkeep
The acquisition of literacy skills occurs through numerous encounters and ample experience with the printed word. The outcome of this process is a set of stored mental representations of words or word parts. When these words encoded in memory and stored for long-term retrieval, the process is referred to as orthographic learning. Orthographic learning can be defined as the transition from the slow sounding out of an unfamiliar new word to the rapid automatic recognition of the same word. Children acquire orthographic representations through phonological decoding, or decoding words and nonwords by sounding them out. However, it is not clear to what extent phonological decoding facilitates orthographic learning in adult readers.
Anna Chrabaszcz and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh conducted two experiments with English-speaking college students to explore how they acquire orthographic representations of unfamiliar words through reading exposure. This study builds on prior research on orthographic learning in children and is based on the self-teaching hypothesis which suggests that readers can acquire new orthographic representations incidentally, without intentional learning, and that phonological decoding may be qualitatively different in young children versus adults.
Across two experiments, the research team manipulated access to phonology during reading aloud and silent reading of pseudowords by English-speaking undergraduate students. They also tested whether simultaneous speech during silent reading leads to poorer learning due to the suppression of subvocalization, or silent or barely audible speech. By comparing different reading methods, the researchers explored the role of phonological decoding in adult orthographic learning and investigated the role of the self-teaching hypothesis in adult orthographic acquisition.
Reading aloud, using phonological decoding, led to better recognition and recall of pseudowords compared to reading silently. Unlike in previous reports of child orthographic learning, simultaneous speech during reading aloud did not reduce learning outcomes in adults, suggesting that adult readers may rely on other processing strategies during silent reading, such as direct orthographic processing or lexicalized phonological decoding. This is consistent with claims that with increasing orthographic knowledge, reading mechanisms shift from being more phonologically-based to more visually-based.
These findings offer sound contributions to our understanding of how reading mechanisms change in adulthood. The findings are consistent with the self-teaching hypothesis and emphasize the role of phonological decoding in orthographic learning, at least in an alphabetic language (English). The authors demonstrated that reading aloud, which leverages phonological decoding, improves recognition and recall of new orthographic forms compared to when reading silently. Thus,self-study practices that involve overt reading of texts and flash cards with new vocabulary items should be encouraged for better memory upkeep.
Read the full study published in Acta Psychologica.
Chrabaszcz, A., Gebremedhen, N.I., Alvarez, T.A., Durisko, C., & Fiez, J.A (2023). Orthographic learning in adults through overt and covert reading. Acta Psychologica.
Written by Sarah Liez