27 Nov
2012
27 Nov
'12
11:42 a.m.
We cordially invite you to the next lecture of the BME Cognitive Seminar
Series:
Date & Time: December 3, Monday, 12:00-13:00
Location: BME, XI., Egry József utca 1., T. ép 515.
*General and specific factors of reading development*
*Dénes Tóth, PhD*
MTA-TTK
(Hungarian Academy of Sciences - Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and
Psychology)
web: http://www.mtapi.hu/index.php?mi=419&lang=en&
Abstract
On the psychological level, phonological processing, especially phoneme
awareness is regarded as a key factor in early reading development.
Based on a large-scale international behavioral study, we present an
alternative view instead of the commonly adopted schema which suggests
causal or reciprocal cognitive factors. The general (g) factor model of
reading presumes a general (mostly genetically determined) factor and
several independent specific factors behind reading and reading-related
behavioral performance. The model is universal in the sense that it has
almost the same structure in several alphabetical orthographies and it
also partly explains non-phonological, that is purely orthographic
processing. The g factor can be conceived as a specialization ability
that certain brain areas not devoted to reading-related processing are
able to transform in the first phase of reading acquisition in a way
which enables the mapping or recoding of orthographic and phonological
information at an elementary level, allowing the automatisation of both
phonological and orthographic access. However, the optimization of
orthographic processing corresponding to the statistical regularities of
a given orthography contains components which are almost fully
independent from these processes. We base the latter argument on a
large-scale developmental experiment in which the encoding of various
visual elements (letters, digits and symbols) and their position was
investigated and complex interactions were found, suggesting that the
development of orthographic processing also reflects adaptive
specialization.
--
Attila Keresztes
Junior Research Fellow
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Dept. of Cognitive Science,
Egry József u. 1, Budapest
1111, Hungary
Tel: +36 1 4633525