University of Valencia, Spain; UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, England.
University of Valencia, Spain.
Neuropsychologia. 2017 Nov;106:261-279. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.10.006. Epub 2017 Oct 5.
Previous studies suggest that deaf readers use phonological information of words when it is explicitly demanded by the task itself. However, whether phonological encoding is automatic remains controversial. The present experiment examined whether adult congenitally deaf readers show evidence of automatic use of phonological information during visual word recognition. In an ERP masked priming lexical decision experiment, deaf participants responded to target words preceded by a pseudohomophone (koral - CORAL) or an orthographic control prime (toral - CORAL). Responses were faster for the pseudohomophone than for the orthographic control condition. The N250 and N400 amplitudes were reduced for the pseudohomophone when compared to the orthographic control condition. Furthermore, the magnitude of both the behavioral and the ERP pseudohomophone effects in deaf readers was similar to that of a group of well-matched hearing controls. These findings reveal that phonological encoding is available to deaf readers from the early stages of visual word recognition. Finally, the pattern of correlations of phonological priming with reading ability suggested that the amount of sub-lexical use of phonological information could be a main contributor to reading ability for hearing but not for deaf readers.
先前的研究表明，当任务本身明确要求时，失聪读者会使用单词的语音信息。然而，语音编码是否是自动的仍然存在争议。本实验考察了成年先天性失聪读者在视觉词汇识别过程中是否表现出自动使用语音信息的证据。在 ERP 掩蔽启动词汇判断实验中，失聪参与者对以假同形同音字（koral-CORAL）或正字法控制启动（toral-CORAL）为先导的目标词做出反应。与正字法控制条件相比，假同音字条件下的反应更快。与正字法控制条件相比，假同音字条件下的 N250 和 N400 振幅减小。此外，失聪读者的行为和 ERP 假同音字效应的大小与一组匹配良好的听力对照组相似。这些发现表明，语音编码在视觉词汇识别的早期阶段就可供失聪读者使用。最后，语音启动与阅读能力的相关模式表明，对语音信息的亚词汇使用量可能是听力读者阅读能力的主要贡献因素，但不是失聪读者的主要贡献因素。
