31.1692, Review: Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics; Writing Systems: Perret, Olive (2019)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-31-1692. Tue May 19 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 31.1692, Review: Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics; Writing Systems: Perret, Olive (2019)
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Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 21:58:15
From: Jana Hasenäcker [janahasenaecker at gmail.com]
Subject: Spelling and Writing Words
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-3225.html
EDITOR: Cyril Perret
EDITOR: Thierry Olive
TITLE: Spelling and Writing Words
SUBTITLE: Theoretical and Methodological Advances
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Writing
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2019
REVIEWER: Jana Hasenäcker
SUMMARY
“Spelling and Writing Words”, edited by Cyril Perret and Thierry Olive, is the
39th volume of the “Studies in Writing” series, which aims to provide insights
into the foundations of writing. The volume is a collection of contributions
about current theoretical and methodological issues in the research on written
word production from a psycholinguistic perspective. It is concerned with the
cognitive processes and dynamics involved in individuals’ production of
written words and touches upon a variety of topics, such as the role of
phonology for writing, learning to spell, bilingual spelling, writing and
language disorders, interplay of letter production and perception, individual
differences and variability in writing, and neurophysiological correlates of
writing.
The book is divided into three parts after a general introductory chapter: (1)
Theoretical and Empirical Section, (2) Methodological Section, and (3)
Conclusions. Each section consists of 2-5 stand-alone chapters, each tackling
a unique aspect of writing research.
The introductory chapter “Writing Words: a Brief Introduction” by the volume’s
editors Cyril Perret and Thierry Olive provides an overview of the cognitive
processes involved in writing words, a short introduction to methods used to
study written word production, and the presentation of two central issues in
writing research. This is followed by an overview over the following chapters
of the book and how they relate to each other.
The first section of the book focuses on theoretical and empirical issues in
word production, starting with “A Role of Phonology in Orthographic
Production? A historical Perspective and Some New Evidence” by Markus F.
Damian. This chapter tackles the issue of the contribution of phonology to
orthographic production from by taking a historical perspective, reviewing the
evolvement of theories of spoken and written language processing, and then
outlining some relevant experimental evidence sorted by task. The chapter end
with a short outlook on several issues that remain to be solved, among them
the comparison of different scripts, single vs. multiple words, individual
differences, and the time-course of writing.
The next chapter, “Implicit Statistical Learning of Graphotactic Knowledge and
Lexical Orthographic Acquisition” by Sébastien Pacton, Michel Fayol, Marion
Nys, and Ronald Peereman, takes a developmental perspective. It reviews
evidence on how children’s sensitivity to and knowledge of graphotactic
regularities influences their spelling of pseudowords as well as novel and
familiar real words.
Chapter 4, “BAST: a Theory of Bilingual Spelling in Alphabetic Systems” by
Marie-Josèphe Tainturier, is concerned with spelling abilities and processes
in individuals with more than one language. After shortly reviewing theories
on monolingual spelling in alphabetic languages and bilingual spoken word
production, the author proposes a theory of bilingual spelling and describes
the involved lexical and sublexical processes in detail.
Chapter 5, “The Role of Handwriting in Reading: Behavioral and
Neurophysiological Evidence of Motor Involvement in Letter Recognition” by
Yannick Wamain, considers the interplay of action and perception. Grounded in
theories of embodied cognition, he examines how the motor processes of writing
letters also impact on their recognition. He also discusses the consequences
this has on learning to read and write.
The last chapter of the first section is “Struggling with Writing: an
Examination of Writing Difficulties in Specific Language Impairment,
Developmental Dyslexia and Developmental Coordination Disorder” by Olivia
Alfonso, Vincent Connelly, and Anna L. Barnett. This chapter discusses
different error patterns in individuals with atypical development that is
related to spelling difficulties.
The second section (“Methodological Section”) of the book begins with a
chapter on “Task Differences and Individual Differences in Skilled Spelling”
by Patrick Bonin and Alain Méot. The authors start out by discussing findings
from written naming and spelling to dictation. They then illustrate how these
tasks can be used to examine interindividual differences. Finally, they
reflect on whether and how findings from these tasks can be generalized to
other tasks.
Chapter 8 by Olivia Afonso and Carlos J. Álvarez is dedicated to “Measuring
Writing Durations in Handwriting Research: What Do They Tell Us about the
Spelling Process?”. The authors focus on the distinction and interrelation
between central and peripheral processes in writing, how they can be assessed
using writing durations and what the limits of this methodology are.
Chapter 9 by Laurence Séraphon-Thibon, Silvain Gerber, and Sonia Kandel is
concerned with “Analyzing Variability in Upper-Case Letter Production in
Adults”. This chapter introduces the measurement of stroke durations as a
methodology. It then presents an experimental study measuring stroke and
in-air movements in writing in order to quantify variability in this task. The
results show remarkable consistency in the number of strokes in handwriting.
In the last chapter of the second section, Cyril Perret and Qingqing Qu
introduce “EEG Methods of Exploring Written Word Production”. By means of two
example studies, they show how electrophysiological recordings can be used as
an additional source of information in writing research, especially to answer
questions about the spatio-temporal dynamics of effects that have been
previously found in behavioral studies.
The conclusions part starts with a chapter by Michel Fayol recapitulating the
main issues the previous parts have touched upon in relation to single word
production. He then outlines two key question to be explored in future
research, extending to sentence and text production. He ends with a short
reflection on words as processing units.
The final chapter by Brenda Rapp, “Writing Research in the 21st Century”,
places writing research in a contemporary perspective. She argues why it is
important in a digitalized world and how it can provide insights into current
questions about mind and brain. She then outlines the way forward with a focus
on methodologies that promise further insights, from neuroimaging, over
patient studies, to computational modelling.
EVALUATION
The volume presents a nice collection of current issues and state-of-the-art
research concerning the spelling and writing of single words. The topic is
timely and should be of interest for researchers from a variety of
disciplines, such as psycholinguistics, cognitive and developmental
psychology, education, and neuroscience. The chapters are a potpourri of
different takes on the topic, thus nicely reflecting the diversity of both the
question and methods of on-going research in the field. The broad take on the
topic of spelling and writing is clearly the big strength of the volume, but
it is also the cause of its greatest weakness, namely the internal coherence,
which suffers from this broadness in some parts.
The required background knowledge, detail of explanation, stringency and
quality vary greatly between chapters. Some chapters could have used more
attentive proof-reading, for example Chapter 5 contains many grammatical
errors that disturb the reading.
The book might not be ideal as an introductory reading for students, as it
requires some linguistic and experimental knowledge. For example, the
introduction chapter talks about “microaccelerations” without explaining what
they are and why their measurement could be useful. For researchers working on
related topics, such as language development or reading, who would like to
gain an impression of the key issues and methodologies in writing research, it
provides, however, a useful overview over current issues in the field.
The separation into a “theoretical and empirical” and a “methodological”
section is, in my opinion, not ideal. From this division, I would have
expected that the first section is focused almost only on theories and
questions, leaving out methodologies, whereas the second section
systematically introduces the methods available to answer the questions.
Instead, due to a heavy focus on empirical evidence in the first section, many
research paradigms are already introduced “on the fly”. This could be slightly
overwhelming for students lacking this background. For advanced researchers
with some previous knowledge, this should not be problematic. Researchers
interested particularly in methods of writing research should, however, not be
lured by the division into sections, as they can also find valuable
information about the research paradigm in sections other than the
methodological one. The mixing of methods, evidence and theories makes the
division into the sections slightly artificial, and it could have been left
out.
The concluding chapter by Brenda Rapp especially stands out for me in its
clarity and ability to contextualize the topic, summarize main issues and
point out the most pressing enterprises for the future. Especially impressive
is her finally statement on the goal for 21st century research on writing,
which “must be to develop detailed theories of the writing process that
explain and predict individual human performance and also serve as the basis
of optimized, personalized intervention in cases of impairment. It must be
clear from this volume that it is through the continued deployment of these
highly productive empirical methods, their increased integration and the
development of computationally explicit models that progress towards this goal
will continue to be made” (p.222).
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Jana Hasenäcker is a psycholinguist at the International School for Advanced
Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy. She is interested in the mechanisms and
representations involved in visual word recognition in skilled and developing
readers.
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