Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development – JCLAD
Vol: 9 Issue: 4 394-412, 2021
ISSN: 2148-1997
394
Lexical and sub-lexical auditory phonological priming effects on word
reading in grades 4 and 5
Varun A. G. Uthappa1
Pristine Rehab Care, LLC.
Keith S. H. Wolgemuth2
Loma Linda University
Benjamin J. Becerra3
California State University
Abstract
There is emerging evidence that phonology contributes to visual word
recognition independent of orthography in the upper elementary grades, more so
when reading less frequent words. It is unclear how lexical and different sub-
lexical phonological units influence familiar word reading; therefore, we
investigated the priming effects of the phonological word (repetition), syllable,
rime, and phoneme units on word reading in fourth and fifth grades. We used an
auditory primed and timed word reading task to determine whether different
phonological units influenced the speed of reading familiar words. To examine
their relationship with reading ability, we compared primed reading speeds with
word and pseudo-word reading measures. The results revealed a significant
lexical phonological priming effect of facilitation by repetition primes, and a
difference between the direction of phoneme and rime priming. Lexical
phonological priming did not relate with word or pseudo-word reading. Sub-
lexical syllable priming, on the other hand, had a significant relationship with
word reading. These findings show the influence of primed auditory phonological
units during word reading without any overlapping orthographic prime in
fourth- and fifth-grade children. Overall, lexical phonology has a definitive role of
facilitation regardless of word reading ability whereas the sub-lexical
phonological units appear to have a variable impact. Syllable influenced reading
speed has a direct relationship with word reading.
Keywords: auditory phonological priming, phoneme, syllable, rime, word reading
1. Introduction
Phonological processing is an integral part of reading (Ashby, 2010; Cataldo
& Ellis, 1988; Mattingly, 1972; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). In learning to
read, the ability to convert letters into their corresponding sounds, blend and
later access the phonological lexicon is crucial. There is consensus that
direct orthographic access to the lexicon gradually replaces the reliance on
1 Bio: Dr. Varun Uthappa A. G. is a practicing speech-language pathologist at Pristine
Rehab Care, LLC., California. His research interests are in the areas of speech and
language processing in typical and atypical populations. e-mail:
vallarandaganapathy@llu.edu
2 Bio: Dr. Keith S. H. Wolgemuth is a pediatric and rehabilitative audiologist who is a
professor, researcher, clinical supervisor, and speech-language pathology doctoral program
director at Loma Linda University in southern California. e-mail: kwolgemuth@llu.edu
3 Bio: Dr. Benjamin J. Becerra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information &
Decision Sciences at California State University, San Bernardino. He is also the co-Director
for the Center for Health Equity on campus and uses data analytics, research methods,
and statistics to perform research in health-related areas. e-mail:
benjamin.becerra@csusb.edu
Received : 04.09.2021
Accepted : 18.10.2021
Published : 05.12.2021
mailto:vallarandaganapathy@llu.edu
mailto:kwolgemuth@llu.edu
mailto:benjamin.becerra@csusb.edu
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
395
phonological coding as reading proficiency increases (e.g., Acha & Perea,
2008; Ehri, 2005; Castles et al., 2007). Studies have shown that this shift
does not exclude phonology as a factor that continues to exert an influence
on reading (Leinenger, 2014; Milledge & Blythe, 2019; Sauval et al., 2017).
While a serial conversion of graphemes to phonemes prior to lexical selection
may be unnecessary with increasing reading experience, phonological
patterns extracted from written units do impact visual word recognition in
younger, developing readers (e.g., Kyte & Johnson, 2006; Jared et al., 2016).
However, the specific role of different auditory phonological units not
extracted from written units on word reading in developing readers remains
unclear. Psycholinguistic research regarding phonological grain size in
reading also provide an inclusive account of phonology and orthography (see
Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Although phonological processing in reading is
not devoid of orthographic processing, studies comparing the performance of
children on the former with actual reading ability typically use phonological
awareness tasks that require manipulations of auditory phonological input
(see Melby-Lervåg et al., 2012). It is not known whether auditory
phonological units are relevant for reading beyond correlations with explicit
phonological processing tasks. Therefore, we investigated the impact of
lexical and sub-lexical auditory phonological units as primes on measured
word reading speed or latency and examined their relationship with word
reading ability in this study.
The role of phonology in learning to read transitions from an implicit
awareness of larger units such as rhyming words to an explicit meta-
phonological knowledge of smaller units such as the phoneme or rime.
Preschool children auditorily categorize rhyming words or identify a non-
rhyming word without declarative knowledge of the rime causing a rhyming
effect (see Seymour & Duncan, 1997). As children continue to receive
instruction, they recognize the components within words, identify the
smallest units, and manipulate speech sounds that comprise words (e.g.,
Frost, 1998; Stahl & Murray, 1994; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). In the early
stages of learning to read, children rely on the auditory phonological
processing system and as children enter the early elementary grades, a
sequence of letters is treated as representing corresponding sounds that
blend together to form the phonological lexicon associated with the written
word. This process becomes relatively automatic and explicit phonological
coding is then not always required as a direct channel accessing the
phonological lexicon for written words strengthens (e.g., Acha & Perea, 2008;
Castles et al., 2007). Thus, the role of orthography in identifying words
increases and one relies on phonology when reading less-familiar words (e.g.,
Eddy et al., 2016; Schmalz et al., 2013; Ziegler et al., 2014).
The self-teaching theory of reading development acknowledges this shift in
reading style where a developing reader plays an active role to make sense of
the phonological patterns encountered in a given orthographic structure
(Share, 1995). The dual route model explains this difference in the pattern of
reading through two separate routes accessing the input lexicon. The non-
lexical route accesses the phonological lexicon by linking each grapheme
with its corresponding phoneme. It is suitable for reading regular words that
follow the phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules in an alphabetic script.
Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development – JCLAD
Vol: 9 Issue: 4 394-412, 2021
ISSN: 2148-1997
396
The direct route relies on the orthographic connection with the phonological
lexical unit for reading familiar and irregular words (Coltheart et al., 1993;
Coltheart et al., 2001; Schmalz et al., 2013). However, these routes are not
mutually exclusive.
Reaction time studies on the impact of orthographic primes which convey
phonologically related information, e.g., pseudo homophones and words with
phoneme and feature overlap, on lexical decision making and naming in
children have primarily shown that phonological information redundant in
the words do influence reading (e.g., Brooks & MacWhinney, 2000; Eddy et
al., 2016; Sauval et al., 2018). Zeguers et al. (2018) found contrary evidence
where children across Grades 2, 4 and 6 did not exhibit reliable phonological
priming effects despite large phonological differences between the target and
control primes. Visual tracking during silent reading also provides
preliminary evidence for the role phonology serves in reading (Blythe et al.,
2015; Jared et al., 2016). Children may not always require explicit
phonological recoding in the later stages of reading (e.g., /b/+/ɪ/+/t/ =
/bɪt/), but phonological pattern analysis recognize printing deviations that
do not fit the expected phonological patterns in a script (e.g., bit versus bti).
Research recognizes that the nature of phonological impact varies but does
not cease (see Milledge & Blythe, 2019). Models such as the multiple-route
model and the CDP+ model acknowledge the self-teaching aspect of
phonological coding in children and provide the option to include a dynamic
system of learning to read with phases between the indirect phonology-based
and direct lexical routes (Grainger et al., 2012; Perry et al., 2007).
Orthography, however, mediates this role of phonology.
Interestingly, fewer studies have approached this area of investigation from
the perspective of spoken phonology influencing reading rather than
orthography-mediated phonological effects. It is unclear whether the
presentation of an auditory stimulus encompassing phonological elements
would influence word reading responses, particularly in developing readers.
Intermodal priming studies in adults have shown that auditory spoken
words with overlapping onsets and nuclei, particularly in the initial position
for mono- and disyllabic words, and rime segments are facilitatory to picture
naming when compared with phonologically unrelated spoken words (Meyer
& Schriefers, 1991; Schriefers et al., 1990). Adults have shown similar
facilitatory effects on repetition or identity primes with lexical decision and
spoken word repetition tasks (Dumay & Radeau, 1997; Holcomb et al.,
2005). We found two studies in children that examined the effects of
auditory primes on semantic interpretation of printed words and lexical
decision making, respectively. Reitsma (1984) found that initial spoken CV
syllables were facilitatory for children in Grade 1, but the effects waned for
children in Grade 6. A recent study in third- and sixth-grade children also
found auditory identity prime facilitation compared with unrelated
conditions on both frequent and less frequent words. They also reported that
this facilitatory effect was larger for less frequent words as compared to
frequent words (Sauval et al., 2017). Therefore, preliminary evidence
indicates that speech-based phonological input modulates visual word
recognition in children. It is unclear how these effects change with the use of
different spoken phonological units and on a read aloud task.
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
397
The models of reading discussed above also limit their exploration to the
utility of the phonological route in the context of deciphering orthographic
units. The bimodal interactive activation model (BIAM), based on the work of
McClelland and Rumelhart (1981), considers the role of non-orthographic
phonological input. It supports the connectedness between spoken and
written language processing. Both auditory and visual (script) input may
activate phonological codes at the lexical and sub-lexical levels (e.g.,
Grainger et al., 2003; Diependaele et al., 2010). Studies by Sauval et al.
(2017) and Reitsma (1984) suggest the presence of activation at both lexical
(identity priming) and sub-lexical (syllable) levels on tasks that involve
decision making but no requirement for a word to be read aloud. Although
spoken phonology influences lexical decision making, it is uncertain whether
the same holds good in the process of reading aloud.
In this study, we investigated whether spoken repetition of the entire target
word, syllable, phoneme, and rime prime stimuli would have an effect on a
timed read aloud task. The choice of the three sub-lexical units used in this
study was based on psycholinguistic research in adults and children
pertaining to phonological grain size in orthographic processing. The results
of unimodal (visual-visual) and intermodal (auditory-visual) priming studies
reveal that onset-phoneme, rime, and syllable grain sizes alter the reaction
time of visual word recognition (Campos et al., 2018; Brooks & MacWhinney,
2000; Grainger & Ferrand, 1996; Ferrand et al., 1997; Schiller, 2004; Sauval
et al., 2017). Additionally, correlational studies between phonological
awareness and reading achievement rely on meta-phonological tasks using
these different phonological units to compare with reading ability (e.g.,
Anthony & Francis, 2005; Anthony & Lonigan, 2004; Deacon, 2011; Del
Campo et al., 2015; Hogan et al., 2005; Hulme et al., 2012; Melby-Lervåg et
al., 2012; Plaza, 2001; Plaza & Cohen, 2003). Phonological awareness tasks
involve an analysis of spoken phonology (e.g., phoneme elision, syllable
blending, rime awareness) which suggest that reading differences can be
influenced by factors such as bilingualism, the language under
consideration, lack of reading experience (non-readers) and duration of
reading exposure (e.g., Denton et al., 2000; Haigh et al., 2011; Li et al.,
2017; Plaza, 2001; Sauval et al., 2017). The participants in our study were
Spanish-English bilinguals as this group represented the majority
population of the school district where the study was conducted. Therefore,
we note that the syllable is a key unit in Spanish phonological awareness
(Denton et al. 2000). In a review of cross-linguistic transfer effects in
reading, Lallier and Carreiras (2018) noted that crosslinguistic effects
depend on orthographic depth and factors such as reading level and
language proficiency between the two languages children learn to read. Since
the participants in our study only had exposure to written language in
English, we did not anticipate cross-linguistic transfer occurring as a result
of learning to read two different languages. If anything, there may be direct
phonological transfer effects based on spoken exposure to the two languages.
Overall, research has shown that phoneme, rime, and syllable awareness
tasks either correlate with or predict word reading performance from about
four years of age till Grade 6 to varying degrees, and that the strength of this
relationship reduces with increase in grade level (e.g., Anthony & Francis,
Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development – JCLAD
Vol: 9 Issue: 4 394-412, 2021
ISSN: 2148-1997
398
2005; Anthony & Lonigan, 2004; Deacon, 2011; Del Campo et al., 2015;
Hogan et al., 2005; Hulme et al., 2012; Melby-Lervåg et al., 2012; Plaza,
2001; Plaza & Cohen, 2003). Taken together, experimental priming studies
and correlational analyses have shown the importance of sub-lexical units in
developing reading skills. It is not known whether there is a pattern in which
phonological units in a spoken form impact the process of reading words
when the orthographic cues are absent, particularly in the upper elementary
grades. If there is an impact of spoken phonological units on reading, it is
unclear at this time as to how it relates with word reading ability per se.
Therefore, this study aimed to: (1) determine whether different types of
spoken phonological units exert an influence on word reading speed and (2)
examine the relationship between the effects of these phonological units on
word reading latency and reading ability. We investigated the first question
through an auditory priming experiment where we presented lexical
(repetition) and sub-lexical (phoneme, rime, syllable) primes prior to familiar
words read aloud as fast as possible. We predicted that if the auditory
phonological units at both lexical (repetition) and sub-lexical levels
(phoneme, rime, syllable) impact word reading speed, reaction times across
experimental conditions would be significantly different than that of the no
prime control condition. If they do not impact word reading uniformly, a
pattern would emerge indicating specific units which yield differences
compared with the control condition. We anticipated that reading trisyllables
would take longer than reading monosyllables in the control condition due to
the orthographic length effect (Spieler & Balota, 2000). We used familiar
words instead of less frequent and unfamiliar words for three reasons.
Familiar words were preferred over unfamiliar and less frequent words to
control the confounding variable of word recognition ability in a primed and
timed read aloud task. The impact of auditory phonological units on reading
speed of less frequent and unfamiliar words may be expected considering
reduced lexical knowledge, but the concern of this study was to find the role
of spoken phonological units in conditions where phonological recoding is
not typically essential. The results based on words subjected to a familiarity
rating by third-grade teachers from the same school district as the
participants were expected to be of greater relevance. We addressed the
second question by comparing the reaction time values of the different
experimental conditions with measures of real word and pseudo-word
reading ability. Floyd et al. (2007) found that word decoding ability is
unrelated to the speed of processing as measured by visual matching,
decision speed and cross out tasks beyond eight years of age. If this effect
persists with the speed of word reading, the reaction time of the two control
conditions would be unrelated to reading ability in our study. We assumed
that if the role of phonology is dependent on reading level, there would be a
relationship between the experimental primed reaction time values and
scores on the word and/or pseudo-word reading tasks and expected that the
nature and strength of these relationships may vary based on the lexical and
sub-lexical level of phonological unit used as well as the type of reading task.
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
399
Methodology
2.1 Participants
Thirty children from fourth (five males, eight females) and fifth grades (10
males, seven females), with a mean age of 10.2 years (range: 9.2 years to
11.0 years), from a public elementary school in southern California
participated in the study. We chose them consecutively per the return of
letters of interest attached to advertisement flyers, by interested parents. We
obtained a written informed consent from the parents in the language of
their choice (Spanish or English) and a written assent from each participant.
The participants were Spanish-English bilinguals receiving academic
instruction in English, the majority population of the school district. The
nature of Spanish exposure at home (e.g., Spanish vs. Spanish-English
speaking parents or grandparents at home, dialect and proficiency
differences across families and individuals) was variable. We excluded
children with known diagnoses of sensory, speech, language, social-
emotional, cognitive, and reading impairments, and those receiving special
education services or on a 504 plan. All participants passed hearing and
vision screenings at school. Participation was voluntary and each participant
received a gift worth $10.
2.2. Instrumentation
We administered the primed word naming experiments using a Dell Inspiron
13 7373 laptop running Windows 10 operating system. A compatible noise-
cancelling headset microphone (Logitech-H390) delivered the auditory
primes and recorded word naming responses. The DMDX software (Forster &
Forster, 2003) presented the stimuli and recorded the experimental data. We
used the DMDX compatible CheckVocal software (Protopapas, 2007) to view
audio-visual output (audio playback, waveform, and spectrogram) for
reaction time (latency) analysis of word naming responses. We chose the
letter-word identification (WI) and word attack (WA) subtests of the
Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement (Schrank et al., 2014) to include
real word and pseudo-word reading tasks. In the former, children may read
the words using a combination of direct and indirect routes of reading. The
latter requires the application of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules
by blending sub-lexical phonological units extracted from the script.
2.3 Materials
First, we made lists of 120 monosyllabic (consonant-vowel-consonant) and
60 trisyllabic words with consonant onsets familiar to third graders from
grade level books. Three third-grade teachers rated the words for their
familiarity to third-grade students on a 3-point rating scale: very familiar,
familiar, unfamiliar. We discarded words rated as unfamiliar by any rater and
retained words rated as very familiar and familiar (92 monosyllabic and 48
trisyllabic words). Using systematic random sampling (every second item
from randomized lists), we arrived at 60 and 30 monosyllabic and trisyllabic
words, respectively. Very familiar and familiar words were chosen for two
reasons: (1) they are not expected to interfere with read aloud responses for
children and (2) the effect of the spoken primes, if any, would not be
Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development – JCLAD
Vol: 9 Issue: 4 394-412, 2021
ISSN: 2148-1997
400
conflicted by a need to access the phoneme grapheme correspondence route
for reading less-familiar words.
The 60 monosyllabic words were targets for the phoneme, rime, repetition
and corresponding no prime conditions. We divided them into two sets of 30
each for phoneme and rime priming conditions, using the odd-even method.
The 30 trisyllabic words were targets for syllable, repetition and
corresponding no prime conditions. For monosyllabic repetition and no
prime targets, we chose 30 words from the 60 monosyllabic words using
systematic random sampling. We divided them into two sets of 15 words for
no prime and repetition prime conditions using the odd-even method. For
trisyllabic repetition and no prime targets, we divided the 30 trisyllabic
words into two sets of 15 words for no prime and repetition prime conditions
using the odd-even method. Thus, the primed word naming experiments
included 150 words serving as targets for the phoneme, rime, syllable,
repetition (monosyllabic: M-R and trisyllabic: T-R) and no prime
(monosyllabic: M-NP and trisyllabic: T-NP) conditions (Appendix). We used
the no prime condition as a control instead of an unrelated condition to
ensure the interpretation of any change in reaction time between
experimental and control conditions as either facilitatory or inhibitory. We
selected trisyllable and monosyllable words as target stimuli for phoneme
and syllable priming, respectively. Using target stimuli of equivalent word
length corresponding with their primes (one-third, i.e., first phoneme as
prime among the three phonemes in monosyllables and first syllable as
prime among the three syllables in trisyllables) would control for word length
as an extraneous variable. By maintaining an equivalent ratio between the
length of the prime and target across the phoneme and syllable priming
conditions, any resulting difference between the two primed and
corresponding control conditions could be attributed to the nature of the
prime itself.
The primes for the phoneme (e.g., /s/ for ‘sit’), rime (e.g., /ɪt/ for ‘sit’),
syllable (e.g., /bə/ for ‘banana’) and repetition (e.g., /sɪt/ for ‘sit’) priming
conditions were audio recorded in a quiet room using Praat software
(Boersma, 2001). For plosive consonants in the phoneme prime condition,
we recorded the phonemes with a partial vowel (e.g., /p/ as ‘puh’). We edited
the recordings to remove periods of silence before and after the prime for
their precise duration in milliseconds: phoneme (M=483, SD=131), rime
(M=512, SD=56), syllable (M=638, SD=102), M-R (M=617, SD=82) and T-R
(M=874, SD=140). The auditory presentation of primes controls for
orthographic influence. Any impact on reaction time (latency) in correctly
reading aloud the target word would be due to the auditory phonological
prime preceding the reading task. We wrote DMDX programs such that the
on-screen display began with a fixation point (*) for 500 milliseconds. An
auditory prime of its respective duration corresponding with the prime type
(Sauval et al., 2017) and a silence of 500 milliseconds for the no prime
conditions followed. The prime duration was equal to the stimulus-onset
asynchrony (SOA) as we did not use an interstimulus interval between the
prime and target to control for strategic processing to the maximum extent
possible (Neely, 1991; Posner & Snyder, 1975). We presented the target word
in lower case letters for 3000 milliseconds. We prepared a practice set
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
401
consisting of 10 prime-target pairs from the very familiar or familiar words
not selected for the stimulus set.
2.4 Procedures
The participants sat in a quiet and well-lit room at their elementary school.
For the primed word reading experiments, we adjusted seating to ensure
visibility of the laptop screen. We verified placement of the headset
microphone such that the recorded responses were audible. The participants
were instructed as follows, “Focus on the laptop screen when you see the ‘*’.
You may hear some sounds through the headphones and immediately see a
word on the screen. Read the word aloud as soon as you can”. We chose the
word naming/reading task over lexical decision to avoid cognitive demands
associated with choosing the correct versus incorrect responses. The
auditory prime presentation with the reading task is functionally relevant as
it mirrors tasks in phonology-based reading instruction where one provides
spoken phonological cues to support word reading. The participants took the
practice trials they became familiar with the task. They needed no more than
two repetitions of the practice set. We presented the stimulus for each of the
conditions in random order. The software randomized the items within each
experiment. We administered the two word reading subtests per instructions
in the test manual. The participants took short breaks (approximately 5
minutes) between the experiments or tests, as needed. We gave a small
reward to each participant upon completion of the tasks.
2.5 Data Analysis
We analysed the digitally recorded primed word naming responses for onset
reaction times in milliseconds using CheckVocal software. We excluded
erroneous word reading responses (incorrect word identification, response
onset before 250 milliseconds – less than 0.1%, participant’s overt
inattention). We analysed the data using both descriptive and inferential
statistics (Statistical Package for Social Sciences software - version 26). All
statistical tests used p<.05 as the level of significance. We compared the
experimental priming conditions with their corresponding control conditions
through paired t-tests. Effect size using Cohen’s d was calculated
considering t value for correlated observations (tc), d=tc [2(1-r)/n]½ and
tc=MD/(SDD/n½) (MD is the difference of means, SDD is the standard
deviation of differences, r is the correlation co-efficient and n stands for
sample size), for all paired comparisons (Dunlap et al., 1996). To determine
priming effects across the three sub-lexical phonological units, we
administered repeated measures ANOVA with a Greenhouse-Geisser
correction and conducted post hoc analyses using the Bonferroni correction.
We performed Pearson’s correlations to examine the relationship between the
reaction time values, and word and pseudo-word reading scores. We also
conducted correlational analyses by controlling the WI and WA scores for age
or grade.
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ISSN: 2148-1997
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3. Findings
We calculated mean reaction time values for each of the priming and control
conditions and compiled raw scores on the WI and WA subtests for each
participant. Table 1. summarizes the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD)
values for the experimental and control priming conditions, and subtests of
word reading ability.
Table 1
Mean and Standard Deviation for Primed Word Reading Reaction Times (in
milliseconds) and Reading Raw Scores
Measure M SD Error* M SD Error*
Priming Condition Priming Condition
M-NP 654 131 2 T-NP 690 128 6.8
M-R 530 107 2.2 T-R 443 145 3.1
Phoneme 631 106 3.1 Syllable 670 114 4
Rime 667 110 2.1 - - - -
Reading Subtest
WI 59.5# 6.2 - - - - -
WA 23^ 4.8 - - - - -
Note. *percentage of erred word reading responses excluded from analysis;
#grade equivalence: 5.2; ^grade equivalence: 5.5
On the paired comparisons of the experimental priming conditions with their
corresponding control conditions, we obtained statistically significant
differences between M-R and M-NP (530 ms vs. 654 ms), t(29)=7.25, p<.001,
d=1.03, r=.7, and T-R and T-NP conditions (443 ms vs. 690 ms), t(29)=8.8,
p<.001, d=1.8, r=.37, with large effect sizes. There were no statistically
significant differences between phoneme and M-NP (631 ms vs. 654 ms),
t(29)=1.61, p=.11, d=.18, r=.8, rime and M-NP (667 ms vs. 654 ms),
t(29)=.83, p=.41, d=.1, r=.77, and syllable and T-NP (670 ms vs. 690 ms),
t(29)= 1.875, p=.07, d=.16, r=.88, conditions.
Next, we administered the repeated measures ANOVA to determine the
priming effects across phoneme, rime and syllable primes after obtaining
difference values with their respective no prime control conditions as M-NP
and T-NP (654 ms vs. 690 ms) were significantly different with a small effect
size, t(29)= 2.48, p<.019, d=.28, r=.81. There was a significant effect of prime
type on the adjusted reaction time values, F(1.661, 48.165)=5.97, p=.007,
𝜂𝑝
2=.17, 𝜂2=.17. Post hoc analyses using the Bonferroni correction for three
pairwise tests revealed a statistically significant difference between adjusted
phoneme and rime conditions with an effect size approaching the moderate
level (Mdifference=35 ms), p=.001, d=.46, r =.83. Phoneme and syllable
(Mdifference=2 ms), p=1, d =.03, r =.49, and rime and syllable conditions
(Mdifference=32 ms), p=.04, d=.44, r=.58, were not significantly different
although the latter was approaching significance.
Last, we performed correlational analyses between the reaction time values
and reading scores, also controlling the reading scores for age and grade.
Table 2. summarizes these results.
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
403
Table 2
Primed Reaction Time and Reading Scores – Pearson’s Correlation Coefficients
and p-values
Priming Condition WI WIa WIg WA WAa WAg
r (p) r (p) r (p) r (p) r (p) r (p)
M-NP -.41
(.022)
-.37
(.047)
-.4
(.029)
-.31
(.091)
-.27
(.153)
-.29
(.116)
T-NP -.47
(.008)
-.47
(.01)
-.51
(.005)
-.36
(.05)
-.34
(.065)
-.38
(.042)
M-R -.24
(.202)
-.28
(.128)
-.29
(.12)
-.11
(.55)
-.14
(.463)
-.14
(.441)
T-R -.1
(.589)
-.1
(.603)
-.11
(.549)
-.1
(.598)
-.11
(.57)
-.09
(.617)
Phoneme -.29
(.119)
-.27
(.151)
-.29
(.118)
-.17
(.347)
-.15
(.413)
-.17
(.358)
Rime -.26
(.165)
-.26
(.162)
-.3
(.107)
-.16
(.385)
-.16
(.399)
-.19
(.314)
Syllable -.35
(.053)
-.43
(.02)
-.47
(.01)
-.3
(.101)
-.35
(.06)
-.38
(.037)
Note. acontrolled for age, gcontrolled for grade
The two control conditions, M-NP and T-NP exhibited statistically significant,
weak to moderate negative correlations with WI, with and without controlling
for age or grade. M-NP and T-NP did not correlate with WA, except between
T-NP and WA when controlled for grade. The two repetition priming
conditions, M-R and T-R did not correlate with WI or WA. Among the sub-
lexical units, phoneme and rime priming did not correlate with WI or WA.
Syllable priming exhibited weak to moderate negative correlations with WI
when controlled for age or grade, and with WA only when controlled for
grade.
4. Discussion and Conclusions
The first aim of the study was to determine the role of auditory phonological
lexical, and sub-lexical units on word reading, through a primed and timed
word reading task. We hypothesized that word reading speed primed by
repetition, phoneme, rime, and syllable primes would be different from word
reading speed in their absence, if spoken phonological units exerted an
influence on word reading. The results of the paired comparisons between
the experimental and corresponding control conditions revealed that
auditory repetition primes for both monosyllables and trisyllables facilitated
word reading speed. Phoneme, syllable, and rime units did not exert a
similar influence. Therefore, the results confirm the role of spoken phonology
on word reading at the lexical level but not at the sub-lexical level for this
group of participants in Grades 4 and 5. The repetition priming effect we
observed in this study is consistent with previous findings concerning
identity priming on lexical decision making in children and adults (Holcomb
et al., 2005; Sauval et al., 2017). While we know that lexical phonology
impacts auditory word repetition in adults (Dumay & Radeau, 1997), this
study provides evidence for the relevance of lexical phonology on a speech-
production-based word reading task in fourth- and fifth-grade bilingual
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children. These findings shed light on the direction of priming caused by
spoken identity primes and indicate that they are facilitatory regardless of
word length. Also, this priming effect on third-grade familiar words in
children whose reading and pseudo-word reading grade equivalences (5;2
and 5;5, respectively) are well above the third grade suggests that phonology
does play a role in familiar word reading, contradicting the idea of a
phonological effect associated with orthographically challenging or less-
familiar words (e.g., Eddy et al., 2016; Schmalz et al., 2013; Ziegler et al.,
2014). The only auditory phonological study in children which investigated
syllable level facilitation effects support our finding. The spoken sub-lexical
units including the syllable did not influence fourth- and fifth-grade
participants in our study as they were at grades where syllable facilitation
reduces (Reistma, 1984).
To examine the pattern of influence of sub-lexical units further, we
compared phoneme, rime and syllable priming after adjusting the reaction
time values in relation to their corresponding control conditions. We made
this adjustment to account for the difference between no prime monosyllable
and trisyllable reading speeds. It supported the orthographic length effect on
word reading where words with more orthographic units require a longer
time to read (Spieler & Balota, 2000). The results indicated that the impact
of the three sub-lexical units were different. Pair-wise comparison revealed
that phoneme and rime priming were different with the former being
facilitatory and the latter inhibitory compared to the mean reaction time of
the control condition. The facilitatory effect may be because phoneme primes
elicit prior activation of the initial unit of the target word, thereby requiring
lesser time to continue serial activation of the next phonemes. On the
contrary, rime primes may activate the latter phoneme units in the word. To
produce the target word, the correct sequence of phonemes may have to
compete with the activated rime unit or wait until it is back to pre-activation
levels, requiring more time. The result for auditory rime priming was similar
to findings in adults who show rime interference compared to unrelated
primes (Meyer & Schriefers, 1991). Other pair-wise comparisons between
phoneme and syllable priming, and rime and syllable priming yielded no
significant differences. Among them, phoneme and syllable priming effects
were similar whereas rime and syllable priming effects were approaching
significance. The reduced interference of phoneme priming and syllable
priming, to a certain extent, versus rime priming was similar to findings in
adults where beginning-related auditory primes interfere less than end-
related primes (Meyer & Schriefers, 1991; Schriefers et al., 1990). Overall,
the findings point to a facilitatory trend of phoneme and syllable priming and
an interfering trend of rime priming. These findings imply that the role of
auditory phonological units at different sub-lexical levels may be subtly
different.
Secondly, we aimed to study the relationship between timed word reading
under the influence of phonological primes and word reading ability. Here,
we began by examining whether the two no prime reading reaction times
varied as a function of reading ability. The results revealed that both
monosyllabic and trisyllabic reading speeds were faster for children who had
higher word identification scores. Therefore, the speed of reading aloud
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
405
appears to be related to word reading ability, inconsistent with prior
research that has suggested an independence between processing speed on
visual word recognition and reading ability after eight years of age (Floyd et
al., 2007). On the other hand, repetition priming reaction times for both
monosyllables and trisyllables did not relate with word reading ability. It may
be argued that in both the repetition priming conditions, the participants
only had to hear the prime and repeat it without reading the word. Although
it is possible that the participants may not have required to read the written
target per se, we only considered word reading responses with an onset of
250 milliseconds after the onset of the written word to ensure that the
responses were not initiated upon presentation of the prime. Together with
the findings of lexical auditory priming, it supports the notion that reading
ability does not necessarily override the effects of spoken phonology at the
lexical level on a familiar word reading task in children. This is unlike the
variable effect of auditory identity priming on a lexical decision task where
primes influence less frequent words greater than more frequent words
(Sauval et al., 2017).
Among the sub-lexical priming conditions, we found that syllable primed
reading reaction time was faster when word identification scores were higher
after controlling age or grade. There is no previous research referencing
auditory syllable priming and word reading per se; however, the study by
Reistma (1984) that emphasized the continuing role of the auditory initial
syllable in the years of learning to read and these findings support the
notion that the syllable is a unit that potentially has an auditory
phonological impact which relates to reading ability. There are a couple of
possibilities as to why the syllable emerged as the sole auditory phonological
unit exhibiting a relationship with reading ability. The phonological syllable
effect may continue beyond the early reading years as the syllable is the
earliest and largest sub-lexical unit in the developmental hierarchy of
phonological awareness (Anthony & Francis, 2005). Interestingly, the
repetition prime which is larger than the syllable prime did not yield a
similar relationship. Considering the presence of Spanish-English
bilingualism, the syllable unit may have exerted an auditory phonological
cross-linguistic influence based on oral language exposure (Denton et al.,
2000). In addition, there was no consistent relationship obtained with word
attack and any of the reading reaction time conditions indicating that the
use of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules during pseudo-word
reading did not relate with reading speed. This is a difference in the auditory
phonological influence on real and pseudo-word reading.
These findings collectively point to a variable role of spoken phonological
processing in reading. Spoken phonology at the lexical level enhances word
reading speed. There is a difference between phoneme and rime priming
effects at the sub-lexical level. Syllable priming effect on word reading in
terms of facilitation relates with real word reading ability, but not word
attack. The impact of auditory phonology on reading aligns with the BIAM
model which supports the interaction between speaking and print
mechanisms (Grainger et al., 2003; Diependaele et al., 2010). Like the
activation of phonological codes for visual word recognition at both lexical
and sub-lexical levels according to BIAM, the present study illustrates that
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ISSN: 2148-1997
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speech units in the context of reading aloud process at lexical and sub-
lexical levels. Together with the finding that auditory primed word reading
speed is not related to pseudo-word reading ability, the priming results
suggest that models of reading must account for spoken phonological
influences along with phonological influences extracted from the orthography
via an indirect route, for a comprehensive account of reading development.
This study confirms that spoken phonology influences English word reading
in fourth- and fifth-grade Spanish-English bilingual children without
orthographic involvement, through an auditory primed word reading
experiment. We recognize limitations which future research may shed light
on regarding the phonological aspects of reading from an orthography-
independent perspective. While the role of lexical repetition primes was clear,
additions to the priming paradigm may help delineate the impact of sub-
lexical units to a greater extent. We suggest exploring the effect of SOAs
much closer to the target than in the current study where prime onset was
at least 300 milliseconds prior to the target. We retained a variable prime
duration to match the non-experimental situation of phonology-based
instruction in a real clinical/educational setting. Priming through SOAs
between 150 milliseconds before and after the target would help investigate
the time course of sub-lexical phonological access (e.g., Meyer & Schriefers,
1991; Zeguers et al., 2018). Previous studies have considered unrelated
primes as controls (Meyer & Schriefers, 1991; Schriefers et al., 1990; Sauval
et al., 2017). Although we identified the direction of priming by using the no
prime condition as control, the addition of an unrelated condition may yield
more information. Particularly, the sub-lexical primes, which showed a
difference when compared across themselves (phoneme versus rime) may
exhibit stronger effects if individually compared with unrelated primes. Since
the repetition prime was a real word, we assumed that the phonological
effect observed was lexical. Using a readable non-word as a target and
repetition prime would allow a distinction between a whole-unit non-lexical
phonological prime and a lexical one. Further investigation of the
relationship between sub-lexical phonology at the syllable level and reading
ability may reveal a potential bilingual phonological influence by comparing
monolingual and bilingual children reading English, as well as children
reading both English and Spanish languages.
In conclusion, this study broadens our understanding concerning the role of
auditory phonology on reading in fourth- and fifth-grade children. A spoken
repetition prime facilitates the speed of reading aloud in children. This
facilitation extends beyond a non-speech lexical decision task and is
independent of reading ability in these grades. The findings point to
differences in lexical and sub-lexical phonological processing across different
phonological units. Auditory phoneme and rime priming effects occur in the
facilitatory and inhibitory directions, respectively. The syllable is the only
spoken sub-lexical phonological unit whose priming effects appear to relate
with word reading ability. Overall, the findings suggest a lexical phonological
effect without orthography and sub-lexical phonological units appear to vary
in the amount of influence they exert upon word reading.
Phonological units in children’s word reading Uthappa, Wolgemuth & Becerra
407
Acknowledgements
We thank the administrators and teachers at the Fontana Unified School
District and Locust Elementary School for their support in the data
collection process. We are grateful to all the children and parents for their
participation and consent.
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Appendix
Phoneme Rime Syllable M-R T-NP
bat bag banana bag banana
bed beg basketball big butterfly
bet big butterfly bus colorful
bus bug chocolate cat december
cap but colorful dip dinosaur
car cat computer fin forgetful
cop cup december gum hamburger
cut dig different jet lemonade
dip dog dinosaur lip november
fan dot division man rectangle
fat fin forgetful nut sandwiches
for fun gorilla pen september
get god hamburger pot strawberry
gum gun holiday sad tomato
jam jar lemonade tap vacation
jog jet library M-NP T-R
lap kid november bat basketball
lip leg pineapple bug chocolate
mad lit rectangle car computer
mat man respectful cop different
mud mug sandwiches dig division
nut not saturday for gorilla
pen pet september god holiday
pin pot storybook jar library
rat ran strawberry jog pineapple
rob red together leg respectful
sad run tomato mat saturday
sun sit tomorrow not storybook
ten tap vacation rat together
tub top yesterday run tomorrow
ten yesterday