The acquisition of print-to-meaning links in reading: an investigation using novel writing systems

Reading is one of the most remarkable of our cognitive abilities. In a short space of time, most children go from painstakingly sounding out the individual symbols that make up words, to the rapid and seemingly automatic access to meaning from these symbols that skilled readers experience. Literacy has a profound impact on individuals, society, and the economy: amongst other things, it decreases dependency on state benefits and improves participation in the democratic process. Yet, unlike many other of our fundamental capacities (e.g. walking, talking), explicit instruction and practice are necessary in learning to read.

To comprehend text, young children learning alphabetic languages start by translating printed words into their spoken forms, and then they use their knowledge of spoken language to recover meaning. This print-to-sound-to-meaning mapping is often referred to as a sub-word process because words are broken down into letters that systematically correspond to sounds before meaning is accessed. Recent advances in the teaching of reading have shown that phonics instruction helps children to develop these sub-word reading skills. Most children then progress to using a more efficient whole-word process whereby meaning is accessed directly from print. However, we know that around 20% of 15-year-old children in the European Union fail to make this transition, and thus find it difficult to use reading to learn.

To date it has proven difficult to investigate which factors influence the development of sub-word (print-to-sound-to-meaning) and whole-word (print-to-meaning) reading strategies. This is partly because it is often difficult to diagnose which strategies people are using when they read, and partly because it is very challenging experimentally to vary aspects of a child's learning environment without introducing scientific confounds or ethical issues. To overcome these challenges we have developed a laboratory model of reading acquisition in which we study the processes by which adults learn to read new words written in unfamiliar symbols (i.e. an artificial orthography). This method enables us to manipulate exactly what is learned and how it is learned with perfect experimental control, and to observe changes in performance at regular time points using techniques at the leading edge of cognitive neuroscience. For these reasons, we believe that this new approach can contribute to our understanding of the factors that contribute to reading acquisition.

We will conduct three experiments in which adults learn to read artificial orthographies intensely over a period of two weeks. In Experiment 1, we will compare learning to read words written in an alphabetic script in which there is a systematic relationship between individual symbols and sounds with learning to read words written in a logographic script in which there is no systematic relationship between individual symbols and sounds. In Experiment 2, adults will learn to read words written in alphabetic scripts, but for one set of words they will concentrate on learning to read them aloud, whereas for another set of words they will concentrate on learning their meanings. In Experiment 3, we will examine the effect of spelling-to-sound irregularity on these learning processes. Before, early, and at the end of training, we will use behavioural and brain imaging techniques to diagnose the extent to which learners engage sub-word versus whole-word processes to accomplish the reading tasks.

Our results will provide vital knowledge about how a person's language skills, the writing system they are learning, and the way they are taught affect the development of sub-word and whole-word reading pathways. Thus, we anticipate that our findings will be of benefit in the middle to longer term in helping researchers to design evidence-based reading interventions and in informing literacy education and policy more generally.

The development of education methods that help children to become skilled readers is critically important, as literacy is at the heart of achievement, economic growth, culture, and well-being in our society. Recent years have seen great advances in how we help children to discover the relationship between letters and their associated sounds through phonics instruction, thus allowing them to use a print-to-sound-to-meaning pathway to understand printed words. However, we know that around 20% of 15-year-old children in the European Union do not progress beyond this to develop the rapid whole-word reading skills linking print directly to meaning, which underpin the crucial transition from 'learning to read' to 'reading to learn' (OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, 2009).

In order to deliver evidence-based classroom methods for fostering reading development we need to understand the acquisition process fully. Our research is designed to meet this aim. While we do not envisage any immediate user impacts as a result of our findings, we will gain vital knowledge about how a person's language skills, the writing system they are learning, and the way they are taught affect the development of sub-word (print-to-sound-to-meaning) and whole-word (print-to-meaning) reading skills. Our findings will thus be of great relevance for the design of specific reading interventions and the teaching of reading more generally. We therefore believe that our work will benefit particular groups of users in the middle- to longer-term, in particular professionals involved in literacy education and policy, e.g., teachers, head teachers, SENCOs, speech and language therapists, literacy coordinators, and officials in local authorities and in the Department of Education.

In order to reach these user groups, we have planned a number of specific and more general activities. First, we will present our work at conferences such as the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, which attract the professionals that we are seeking to reach. Second, we will host a workshop at Royal Holloway that brings together professionals from the South East region involved in literacy education and policy. We will discuss our findings from the proposed research with these professionals, and will seek to learn from their unique experiences how we can use our research most effectively to promote positive change. Third, we will regularly discuss how our findings might be exploited to serve the needs of users through our established links with literacy organizations and charities (e.g., Dyslexia Action, National Literacy Trust), with specialist language and literacy groups with which we are involved (e.g. the Forum for Research in Language and Literacy), and with policy groups that we work with (e.g. Dr. Davis is a member of the Ministerial Steering Group for Languages in the Department of Education). Finally, we will continue our significant efforts to raise awareness of literacy issues in the general public, through social media and public science events. Our artificial orthography learning method for investigating reading acquisition has already featured on a BBC documentary on dyslexia ("Growing Children"), and Dr. Davis and Dr. Taylor are currently running a project at the Science Museum in London in which members of the public can learn about and participate in language research. We are committed to initiating and taking part in similar outreach events, such as presenting at the RHUL annual Science Open Day, participating in RHUL holiday science 'camps' designed for school children, giving seminars on reading to school teachers, and we will continue to expand these practices during the project.