Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany.
Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University Centre of Reading, Sydney, Australia.
PLoS One. 2021 May 19;16(5):e0251629. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251629. eCollection 2021.
In this work we propose the use of Entropy to measure variability in pronunciations in pseudowords reading aloud: pseudowords where participants give many different pronunciations receive higher Entropy values. Monolingual adults, monolingual children, and bilingual children proficient in different European languages varying in orthographic depth were tested. We predicted that Entropy values will increase with increasing orthographic depth. Moreover, higher Entropy was expected for younger than older children, as reading experience improves the knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). We also tested if interference from a second language would lead to higher Entropy. Results show that orthographic depth affects Entropy, but only when the items are not strictly matched across languages. We also found that Entropy decreases across age, suggesting that GPC knowledge becomes refined throughout grades 2-4. We found no differences between bilingual and monolingual children. Our results indicate that item characteristics play a fundamental role in pseudoword pronunciation variability, that reading experience is associated with reduced variability in responses, and that in bilinguals' knowledge of a second orthography does not seem to interfere with pseudoword reading aloud.
在这项工作中，我们提出使用熵来衡量朗读伪词时发音的变化：参与者给出许多不同发音的伪词会得到更高的熵值。我们测试了单语成年人、单语儿童和熟练掌握不同欧洲语言的双语儿童，这些语言的拼写深度不同。我们预测，熵值会随着拼写深度的增加而增加。此外，与年龄较大的孩子相比，年龄较小的孩子的熵值应该更高，因为阅读经验会提高对字形-音位对应关系 (GPC) 的了解。我们还测试了第二语言的干扰是否会导致更高的熵。结果表明，拼写深度会影响熵，但只有在项目在语言之间没有严格匹配的情况下才会如此。我们还发现，熵随着年龄的增长而降低，这表明 GPC 知识在 2-4 年级之间变得更加精细。我们在双语儿童和单语儿童之间没有发现差异。我们的结果表明，项目特征在伪词发音变化中起着至关重要的作用，阅读经验与反应变化减少有关，并且在双语者对第二拼写的知识似乎不会干扰伪词朗读。
