Examining misses in reading aloud repeated words

ABSTRACT

This study examined a novel task in which participants read aloud passages shown two words per line on a computer screen. There were four different passages, all of which included unrelated sentences, with each sentence containing one test word. The passages differed only in the text type (prose, scrambled) and in the identity of the test word (the, one). The word the is a common function word, whereas one is a less common content word. The test word was repeated in half of the sentences at the end of one line and at the start of the following line. Many more misses in reading aloud occurred on the than on one, especially for prose passages; almost all misses involved repeated words. These results were interpreted in terms of hypotheses and models that have been proposed for the letter-detection task. Specifically, it is concluded that reading aloud is influenced by structural processes that differentiate between function and content words.

KEYWORDS:

• Letter detection
• Reading aloud
• Repeated words
• Structural processes

Acknowledgements

We thank Jon Roberts for help with the computer programming, and Garry Ells and Ted Bradshaw for help with constructing the experimental materials and conducting a preliminary version of the experiment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation [grant number DRL1246588] to the University of Colorado and by a grant from the University of Colorado undergraduate research opportunities program.