Paper available: Phonology, Reading Acquisition, and Dyslexia

[Mike Harm]

Hi.

The following paper has been accepted for publication in Psychological
Review.  It bears on much of the recent discussion on connectionist
models of reading.

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         Phonology, Reading Acquisition, and Dyslexia:
             Insights from Connectionist Models


            Michael W. Harm, Mark S. Seidenberg

             University of Southern California


Abstract:

The development of reading skill and the bases of developmental
dyslexia were explored using a connectionist model of word
recognition.  Four issues were examined: the acquisition of
phonological knowledge prior to reading, how this knowledge
facilitates learning to read, the bases of phonological and
non-phonological types of dyslexia, and the effects of literacy on
phonological representation. Representing phonological knowledge in an
attractor network yielded improved acquisition and generalization
compared to simple feedforward networks.  Phonological and surface
forms of developmental dyslexia, which are usually attributed to
impairments in distinct lexical and nonlexical processing routes, were
derived from different types of damage to the network. The results
provide a computationally explicit account of the role of phonological
representations in normal and disordered reading and how they are in
turn shaped by their participation in the reading task. They also show
that connectionist principles that have been applied to skilled
reading and reading impairments following brain injury account for
many aspects of reading acquisition.

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Send me email at mharm at cnbc.cmu.edu for directions where to download
electronic (postscript or pdf) versions of the paper from.

I apologize that I have not provided a URL for the paper, and that you
must contact me for such information.  My understanding is that the
APA has rules against making such things available in a direct form:

    "If a paper is accepted for publication and the copyright has been
     transferred to the American Psychological Association, the author
     must remove the full text of the article from the Web site. They
     author may leave an abstract up and, on request, the author may 
     send a copy of the full article (electronically or by other means) 
     to the requestor."

     (from http://www.apa.org/journals/posting.html)


cheers,

Mike Harm
mharm at cnbc.cmu.edu
http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~mharm/
-----------------------------------------

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