These materials were used for a registered report study by Hulme, Shapiro, and Taylor:
"Learning new words through reading: Do robust spelling-sound mappings boost learning of word form and meaning?"
Abstract:
High quality lexical representations depend on robust representations of written form (orthography), spoken form (phonology), and meaning (semantics), and strong bonds between them. Quality of lexical representations may be affected by amount of print exposure and the form of individual words. Words that are harder to decode (print-to-sound) may lead to fuzzy representations of the orthographic and phonological forms, potentially creating less stable foundations for semantic knowledge. These factors are difficult to disentangle in natural language research; in this registered report we experimentally manipulated decoding ease and exposure at the item level. Adults read paragraphs describing invented meanings of pseudowords. Pseudowords appeared two or six times in a paragraph, and had easy (“bamper”) or hard (“uzide”) to decode spelling-sound mappings. Post-tests assessed word form knowledge, orthography-semantic mappings, and semantic-phonology mappings. Results showed that greater decoding ease improved learning of word forms and consequently also impacted on word meanings. Higher exposure frequency improved learning of word forms but not meanings. Exposure frequency also modulated the effect of decoding ease on word form learning, with a stronger effect of decoding ease for fewer exposures. Disentangling effects of decoding ease from print exposure has important implications for understanding potential barriers to vocabulary learning.
Built with Experiment
This is the full experiment which begins with an Information Sheet and Consent Form, an Audio Test to check microphone recording, Demographics questions, and a Demo Block which runs through all of the experimental tasks with a small number of practice items. Following this there is random assignment to one of the eight versions of the experiment, and then the experimental tasks in the following order: Paragraph Reading (training task), Vocabulary Test (filler task), Written Form Recognition (Test 1), Cued Recall of Meanings (Test 2), Reading Aloud (Test 3; positive control), and Cued Recall of Words Aloud (Test 4). There are two final questions about cheating and experience of participating at the end of the experiment.
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Built with Task Builder 1
This is the training task in which participants read paragraphs that contained the target pseudowords. Pseudowords appeared either two or six times in a paragraph, and had easy (“bamper”) or hard (“uzide”) to decode spelling-sound mappings. Each participant was trained on half the total number of items (8 of 16 items) in one of eight versions of the experiment to counterbalance the factors of decoding ease, number of exposures, and specific item meaning across participants.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Built with Task Builder 1
This task assessed participants’ knowledge of the orthographic forms of the pseudowords.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Built with Task Builder 1
This task assessed participants’ ability to recall the word meanings from their written forms (orthography-semantic mappings).
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Built with Task Builder 1
This task assessed the mapping between orthographic and phonological forms of the pseudowords and served as the positive control task for the study.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Built with Task Builder 1
This task assessed participants' ability to recall the pseudowords’ spoken forms from written definitions (semantic-phonology mappings).
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