29.3156, Diss: Neurolinguistics: Peggy S Conner: ''Novel spoken word learning in adults with developmental dyslexia''

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3156. Mon Aug 13 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3156, Diss: Neurolinguistics: Peggy S Conner: ''Novel spoken word learning in adults with developmental dyslexia''

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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2018 12:27:35
From: Peggy Conner [peggy.conner at lehman.cuny.edu]
Subject: Novel spoken word learning in adults with developmental dyslexia

 
Institution: CUNY Graduate Center 
Program: Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2013 

Author: Peggy S Conner

Dissertation Title: Novel spoken word learning in adults with developmental
dyslexia 

Dissertation URL:  https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED563669

Linguistic Field(s): Neurolinguistics


Dissertation Director(s):
Loraine Obler

Dissertation Abstract:

A high percentage of individuals with dyslexia struggle to learn unfamiliar
spoken words, creating a significant obstacle to foreign language learning
after early childhood.   The origin of spoken-word learning difficulties in
this population, generally thought to be related to the underlying literacy
deficit, is not well defined (e.g., Di Betta & Romani, 2006; Jakoby, 2010,
2011). Although it is widely accepted that dyslexia is characterized by a core
deficit in phonological processing, considerable debate remains regarding the
etiology of this deficit and how it hinders reading and writing development.
This study investigates two prominent hypotheses about why people with
dyslexia struggle with learning to read and write and examines how these may
explain spoken-word learning difficulties. These hypotheses are the
phonological representations hypothesis that proposes poorly specified
phonological representations can largely account for the literacy difficulties
experienced by people with dyslexia, and the perceptual anchoring deficit
hypothesis that suggests these challenges stem from a reduced ability to
implicitly benefit from repetitions of phonological information.

Thirty-nine individuals, 16 with and 23 without dyslexia were given novel
spoken words paired with pictures of novel objects in a story format. The
relative contribution of the participants’ phonological knowledge (sublexical
and lexical representations) and perceptual anchoring (the ability to benefit
from stimulus-specific repetitions) to this novel word-learning task was
measured by two aspects of a production task. The independent variables of the
phonological properties of the word forms and the effects of repetitions over
test time informed us about phonological knowledge and perceptual anchoring
respectively. The participants’ novel word productions in a picture-naming
task served as the dependent variable. By measuring the participants’ progress
in learning words, we quantified the potential benefit provided both by the
speech-sound characteristics and by repetitions of the novel words over test
time.

The results suggested that deficits in phonological knowledge and perceptual
anchoring make independent contributions to novel spoken-word learning and
that a combination of deficits in the two areas contributes to word-learning
difficulties in learners with dyslexia.  The single best predictor for both
groups was a task of phonological awareness, phoneme reversal.  Apart from
this task, a measure of verbal recall of real words appeared to be a better
predictor for typical learners whereas a measure of spelling had greater
predictor value for the learners with dyslexia.  Spoken-word learning as a
dynamic interaction of implicit and explicit memory processes is presented and
discussed.




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