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Children Like Dense Neighborhoods: Orthographic Neighborhood Density Effects in Novel Readers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

Jon Andoni Duñabeitia  and
Eduardo Vidal-Abarca
Jon Andoni Duñabeitia*
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna
Eduardo Vidal-Abarca
Affiliation:
Universitat de València
*
Address correspondence concerning this article to Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 - Tenerife(Spain). Phone: +34678635223. Fax: +34922317461. E-mail: jaduna@ull.es
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Abstract

Previous evidence with English beginning readers suggests that some orthographic effects, such as the orthographic neighborhood density effects, could be stronger for children than for adults. Particularly, children respond more accurately to words with many orthographic neighbors than to words with few neighbors. The magnitude of the effects for children is much higher than for adults, and some researchers have proposed that these effects could be progressively modulated according to reading expertise. The present paper explores in depth how children from 1st to 6th grade perform a lexical decision with words that are from dense or sparse orthographic neighborhoods, attending not only to accuracy measures, but also to response latencies, through a computer-controlled task. Our results reveal that children (like adults) show clear neighborhood density effects, and that these effects do not seem to depend on reading expertise. Contrarily to previous claims, the present work shows that orthographic neighborhood effects are not progressively modulated by reading skill. Further, these data strongly support the idea of a general language-independent preference for using the lexical route instead of grapheme-to-phoneme conversions, even in beginning readers. The implications of these results for developmental models in reading and for models in visual word recognition and orthographic encoding are discussed.

La investigación previa con lectores principiantes de ingles sugiere que algunos efectos ortográficos, tales como los efectos de la densidad (vecindad ortográfica), podrían ser más fuertes para los niños que para los adultos. En especial, los niños responden con mayor precisión a las palabras con muchos vecinos ortográficos que a las palabras con pocos vecinos. La magnitud de los efectos para los niños es mucho más alta que para los adultos, y algunos investigadores han propuesto que estos efectos podrían modularse progresivamente en función de la competencia lectora. Este estudio explora en profundidad cómo los niños de 1 a 6 curso Ilevan a cabo una decisión léxica con las palabras procedentes de vecindades ortográficas densas o escasas, atendiendo no sólo a las medidas de precisión sino también a las latencias de respuesta, mediante una tarea controlada por ordenador. Nuestros resultados revelan que los niños (como los adultos) muestran claros efectos de densidad (vecindad ortográfica), y que dichos efectos no parecen depender de la competencia lectora. Al contrario de observaciones previas, el trabajo actual muestra que los efectos de vecindad ortográfica no se modulan progresivamente según la competencia lectora. Además, estos datos claramente apoyan la idea de la preferencia por la ruta léxica, que no depende del lenguaje, en vez de las conversiones grafema-a-fonema, incluso en lectores principiantes. Se comentan las implicaciones de estos resultados para los modelos evolutivos de la lectura y para los modelos de reconocimiento visual de las palabras y la codificación ortográfica.

Keywords

lexical accessreading developmentorthographic neighborhooddensity effectacceso léxicoevolución lectoravecindad ortográficaefecto de densidad
Type
Articles
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , May 2008 , pp. 26 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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