Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

It has often been suggested that bilingual children might have enhanced metalinguistic awareness, as compared to monolingual children. In this paper, the evidence for such a stance was reviewed. In contrast to most previous thinking, it is suggested here that if metalinguistic awareness were enhanced at all by exposure to a second language, it might be the process of learning a second language that draws children's attention to their knowledge about language. Accordingly, a group of preliterate second-language learners was compared with monolinguals and bilinguals on word and phonological awareness tasks. It was found that, for the most part, there were no significant differences among linguistic groups on the performance of these tasks. However, a trend of low performance by the bilingual children was observed. This suggests that if the learning of a second language enhancer metalinguistic awareness, these tasks might not be the most appropriate measures.

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, May 14, 1999." Also available in print.

Two ways of representing the spatial arrangement of letters in letter-strings are distinguished. In part-whole representations, the relationship of a letter to the letter-string as a whole is encoded. In part-part representations, the relationships of a letter to other letters in the string are encoded. Computational models of word perception typically use the former, but part-part representations are a very general feature of some neurocomputational models. Experiments ·are reported that examine for nonword and word wholes the representations used to encode their constituent parts; the first five experiments use measures of facilitation to infer encoding type, the next three primarily use error measures. Experiment 1 shows that when a part of a recently learned letter-string is maintained in a briefly-presented test string, the test string is more accurately reported, showing perceptual transfer of training. No significant difference in the amount of transfer is found between maintaining the part in the same position (fixed-part) in the string and maintaining the part in a different position (moved-part) in the string. It is argued that this confirms part-part theories because transfer was obtained when only inter-letter relationships are maintained. Experiment 1 simulated on two implementations of part-whole theories shows that they fail to produce the obtained pattern of performance. This indicates that part-whole relational encoding is not a major part of the representations mediating these transfer effects. Experiment 2 replicates the fixed-part transfer and shows that it is restricted to parts made of adjacent letters. Experiments 3 and 4 use a prototype-extraction paradigm to show that novel parts made of adjacent letters are easier to learn than parts made of non-adjacent letters. Experiment 5 eplicates the moved-part transfer and shows that it is restricted to parts made of adjacent letters. These results show that the major inter-letter relationships encoded are between neighbouring letters. These first five results are taken as showing that pre-processing of the image to provide position-in-the-string information is not important for the representations that produce transfer. It is suggested that modelling the input to the graphemic input lexicon as the Primal Sketch of the image is more appropriate. In particular, realistic early vision algorithms such as MIRAGE appear to be potentially capable of modelling the results obtained. Experiment 6 shows that reports of letters in nonwords have gradients of positional accuracy, with most positional errors occurring close to the correct position. Experiment 7 finds that migrations into the report of the second of two briefly-presented nonwords from the first nonword do not always maintain position though many do. Experiment 8 involved the presentation of mis-spelled words preceded by non words that either encouraged the detection of the mis-spelling or its lexicalisation. Lexicalisation responses involve the migration of a letter from the preceding string. These occur when primed by the lexicalisation letter in the same, but not in moved, positions in the first string, but only when presented in the context of neighbouring letters. Detection of mis-spelling shows both facilitation and inhibition. Facilitation is obtained with the part in moved positions in the source string but not in the same position, in which case inhibition is found. Facilitation is also obtained by prior presentation of the misspelled word or prior presentation of the correctly spelled word. These results are interpreted as showing that facilitation is obtained when the facilitating part of the preceding string either fully or minimally activates a representation of the word mis-spelled on second presentation. Partial activation of the word produces inhibition. The results suggest that part-whole encoding is used for letters in familiar wholes, while part-part encoding is used for letters in unfamiliar wholes. This conclusion is used to motivate a model of the organisation and access of graphemic representations in which the ~ "» -. concept of scale plays an important role. The model is extended to other tasks involving visually presented words and nonwords and a brief account of the major findings attempted. Finally some extensions of the model to the domain of object perception are outlined.

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Despite the fact that phonological awareness (PA) is one of the strongest predictors of reading acquisition, relatively little is known about its origins and development. Theories of spoken word representation and cognitive control were examined to explore the respective roles of linguistic and cognitive factors in the development of PA following debate in the research literature regarding the linguistic versus cognitive basis of PA. Pre-literate, kindergarten children were administered tasks assessing PA, spoken word representation in long-term memory, phonological encoding in working memory, and cognitive control at the beginning and end of the kindergarten year. At the end of grade one, the same children were administered tasks of reading in order to investigate the roles of PA and each of the linguistic and cognitive factors in the development of reading skills. While the ability to phonologically encode spoken words in working memory was a significant predictor of PA, spoken word representation in long-term memory and cognitive control were not causally related to PA. PA was the best predictor of the development of word identification skills in children; however, spoken word representation in long-term memory may play a role in the development of reading comprehension skills. These findings refute the theory of spoken word representation in long-term memory proposed by Walley (1993) and Fowler (1991) and suggest that the causal relationship between cognitive control and PA obtained by Tunmer et al. (1988) may be due to methodological shortcomings in their investigation. Finally, the theory that awareness of an awareness of phonemes arises from the acquisition of reading skills is challenged with the findings that pre-literate phoneme awareness is a significant predictor of reading ability approximately 18 months later. The implications of these findings for the diagnosis of reading disability and reading remediation are discussed.

Thesis (M.A.) in Communication Sciences and Disorders--University of Maine, 2004. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-73).