There are different aims in this thesis. The primary aim is to investigate visual perception in Chinese orthography, from its fundamentally distinct unit, characters, to sentence reading. The first aim of the thesis is to investigate how a single Chinese character is processed in many ways. We have looked into an effect called orthographic satiation/decomposition (Cheng & Wu, 1994). It refers to the feeling of uncertainty about the composition of some characters when staring at a character for too long. Lee (2007) extended Cheng and Wu’s study (1996), and the results have showed that orthographic satiation occurred faster in females than males. We replicated Lee’s study (Experiment 1) (Chapter 3), and have found that: (1) there was no significant difference between male and female and (2) a radical that can stand alone as a single character makes characters in which it occurs resistant to satiation. Following orthographic satiation, in Chapter 4, we explored the preference for eye/hemisphere visual pathways in Chinese characters (Experiment 2 & 3) and words (Experiment 4). In English, researchers have reported a contralateral preference when four-letter words were presented very quickly using a haploscope (Obreg´on & Shillcock, 2012) . It raises the question of whether presenting Chinese characters and words will show similar results considering the complexity and the special characteristics of Chinese orthography. We presented Chinese characters and words to participants using a haploscope. Our results showed that: (1) the contralateral visual pathway was preferred in perceiving right-left structured Chinese characters and two-character words, (2) when a semantic radical is projected to the LH, participants are able to recognise the semantic component better, (3) neighbourhood size (NS) (Tsai, Lee, Lin, Tzeng & Hung, 2006) affects how participants recognise words, and(4) males do better than females recognising characters but not words. After investigating the recognition of Chinese characters and words, we analysed the eye-movements in Chinese and English reading corpora. The processes of reading are intuitively thought to be more complex than perceiving a single character or words. The last studies in the thesis focused on the reading behaviours in Chinese and English. The eye movement differences and similarities between reading Chinese and English were investigated. In Chapter 5, we showed that reading Chinese elicits more divergence of the eyes within a fixation, compared with reading English. We interpreted these data in terms of recent demonstrations that apparent size causes increases in visual sensitivity (Arnold & Schindel, 2010) and engages more cortical resource in V1 (Kersten & Murray, 2010). Our analyses were based on movement within exactly temporally synchronized binocular fixations in the reading of Chinese and English 5000-word multi-line texts, using monocular calibration, with EyeLink-2 technology. When faced with visually complex orthography, the oculomotor system ‘tricks’ the rest of the visual system into ‘zooming in’ on the text. We consolidated the relevant theorizing into the ‘Divergence Affects Reading’ (DOLLAR) Theory. In Chapter 6, we reported that (1) vertical movements within a fixation tend to be smaller than horizontal ones, and (2) vertical movements within a fixation tend to be upwards. We speculated that it is appropriate for the earlier part of the fixation to be associated with visual recognition and for the later part of the fixation to be associated with executive action. The tendency to move upwards also suggested that in real-world reading, the upper part of words/characters were informative. In the last chapter analysing the reading corpus (Chapter 7), we reported corrective saccades after return sweeps. We found that in English, there were more corrective saccades after return sweeps than in Chinese. We interpreted these data in terms of spatial coding (Kennedy & Murray, 1987). In terms of Chinese and English differences, the stimuli that were used in our corpus show that the length for each line was different in English. The length for each line in Chinese was less different. Though the first character of each line was at the same place for two languages, it was more difficult for English subjects to locate the correct place after return sweeps because the length of return sweeps was different. In short, this thesis investigated visual perception in Chinese orthography, in terms of characters, words, and real-world reading. Moreover, we compared the differences and similarities between languages (English and Chinese). Despite the fact that the orthographies of English and Chinese are very different, we still found similar effects (e.g., contralateral preference) between them. This thesis thus has contributed to a better understanding of the differences and similarities between English and Chinese in terms of the orthographies.

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Current literature on spelling strategies has indicated that successful spellers use phonological and morphological information as well as graphemic memory in their spelling. Research into spelling disorders has uncovered two broad categories of poor spellers: Phonetically Inaccurate spellers, whose spelling errors are phonetically unrelated to the target and who also exhibit a generalized language impairment and Phonetically Accurate spellers, whose errors are phonetically plausible and who have no obvious neurological impairment. This study intended to investigate some of the organizational and language abilities of those children known as Phonetically Accurate or Atrocious spellers. The hypothesis was that Atrocious spellers have inadequate knowledge of the phonological and morphological rules necessary for correct spelling. Three phonological processes were under examinations Palatalization, Velar Softening and Stress Shift, Test items incorporated one or more of these processes. Subjects performed three spelling tasks two written spelling tasks with oral presentation of the item and one spelling task without auditory model and three language tasks. The first, Suffixation, required subjects to pronounce real and nonsense words derived from a root word and affix. Subjects also judged relatedness of word pairs and learned nonsense words which either did or did not employ the target processes correctly. Because of the "partial cue" reading method employed by the subjects, it was impossible to determine their knowledge of phonology through the Suffixation task. However, the data gave rise to some interesting considerations. Review of the historical development of spelling suggested possible parallels between synchronic and diachronic development of spelling. Poor handwriting was linked to poor spelling and a rationale was proposed. Several instances of motor perseveration of writing were noted, suggesting that for these cases, the stimulus of the motor pattern was stronger than an auditory model. Some evidence for word recall problems appeared; a confrontation naming task would determine whether the incidence of word finding difficulties is higher in Atrocious spellers than in proficient spellers, Errors in affixation led to further questioning of subjects' morphological competence. Atrocious and good spellers employed a spelling strategy known as "sounding out" with varying degrees of proficiency. The question was then raised of how strongly spelling errors were influenced by the speller's dialect of spoken language. Most notably, nearly all test subjects favoured an auditory over a visual strategy when they were unsure of spelling. This translation from morpheme to phoneme string and then to grapheme string was felt to be developmentally an earlier stage than a direct translation from morpheme to grapheme. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

This study sought to identify problems concerning Pan South African Language Board spelling rules in respect of Tshivenga orthography. A qualitative descriptive research method was chosen. The study population consisted of Pan South African Language Board spelling rules. The rules dealt with nine indigenous languages that were Tshivenga, isiZulu, Siswati, Sesotho, Setswana, Xitsonga, isiXhosa, isiNdebele and Sesotho sa Leboa. Each of the nine indigenous languages had between 12 and 56 rules. Altogether there were 255 rules which constituted the study population of this project. A small but sufficient sample of about twenty rules in Tshivenga orthography was selected. Data were collected by means of unstructured interviews with forty-four purposely selected participants which include linguists as well as document analysis. Ethical considerations were ensured in order to protect participants from any harm or discomfort that might arise from being involved in an investigation. The researcher explained the aim and nature of the study to respondents, to get their informed consent before the interviews. Several strategies to prevent defects, challenges and problems in Tshivenga orthography were recommended based on the results. The strategies focused on aspects which deal with spelling and orthography rules.

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The parlous state in which the English language finds itself in South Africa, both in its written and speech forms, is the cause ot grave concern to most English-speaking citizens, and to many Afrikaans-speaking people as well. This is the case not only in the commercial world and the civll service, but also in the schools and universities, and in fact in most walks of life. Although we are conscious of this state of affairs, and can quote many examples of the poor quality of English used, we have no measuring device through which we can assess exactly how bad the language used by any given group of people is. It is not possible to compare the performance in English of a certain school with standard English and to express the result as a percentage score. The aim of this investigation was to find out how well, or how badly, South African school children spell, and to compare the performances of English- and Afrikaansspeaking pupils. It was felt that the results would provide some concrete evidence and fairly accurate data which could be used to assess the standard of English spelling in our schools, and to pinpoint some of the major weaknesses. The writer hoped, thus, that the investigation might be of some practical usefulness to teachers of English spelling, and as spelling is basic to the written word and to some extent to the spoken word, it might make some small contribution to the drive towards better English in South African schools.

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Naming speed (NS) tasks that measure how quickly and accurately participants can name visual stimuli (e.g., letters) are commonly used to predict reading ability. However, the link between NS and reading is poorly understood. Three methods were used to investigate how NS relates to reading and what cognitive processes are involved: (a) changing stimulus composition to emphasize phonological and/or visual aspects (Compton, 2003); (b) decomposing NS times into pause and articulation components; and (c) analyzing eye movements during a NS task. Participants were in three groups: dyslexics (aged 9, 10), chronological-age (CA) controls (age 9, 10), and reading-level (RL) controls (aged 6, 7). We used a letter NS task and three variants that were either phonologically and/or visually confusing while subjects’ eye movements and articulations were recorded, and examined how these manipulations influenced NS performance and eye movements. For all groups, NS manipulations were associated with specific patterns of behaviour and saccadic performance, reflecting differential contributions of NS to reading. RL controls were less efficient, made more errors, saccades and regressions, and made longer fixation durations, articulation times, and pause times than CA controls. Dyslexics consistently scored in between controls, except for the number of saccades and regressions in which they made more than both control groups. Overall there were clear developmental changes in NS performance, NS components, and eye movements in controls from ages 6 to 10 that appear to occur more slowly for dyslexics. Furthermore, pause time and fixation duration were key features in the NS-reading relationship, and increasing visual similarity of the letter matrix had the greatest effect on performance for all subjects. This latter result was demonstrated by the decrease in efficiency and eye-voice span, increase in naming errors, saccades, and regressions, and longer pause times and fixation durations found for all subjects. We conclude that NS is related to reading via fixation durations and pause times; longer fixation durations reflect the greater amount of time needed to acquire visual/orthographic information from stimuli, and longer pause times in children with dyslexia reflect the greater amount of time needed to prepare to respond to stimuli. / Thesis (Master, Neuroscience Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-26 12:24:53.951

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