How is reading different than hearing?

        Language is written symbols instead of sounds

        and, just to make things more confusing   

        there is no 1 to 1 correspondence between letters and

(see Twain)
How do we look up words when we read?

Direct Route   the letter string is directly connected to the entry for

                the word in the lexicon

Indirect Route   the letters are linked to the sounds that are linked to the words

    |  \

    |   (phonology)

    |   /         

Orthography (Visual features/shapes)
Why would we take the extra step to look up sounds?

     We first learn words by hearing them

     We may be hard-wired for phonological processing (modularity)

     Tongue Twister effect in silent reading

     Problems reading when not allow to mouth words

     Problems reading when listening to a radio

     PRIMING of homonyms   ROWS -TULIP

This says that even adults sometimes process the sounds of written words and use an indirect


What does this suggest about teaching children to read?

    phonics vs. whole words debate

Text processing
How do we "really" understand what we are reading? Or, how do we develop

and understanding of what the whole passage is really about?

1. We have multiple levels of representation: surface and propositional

similar to linguistic: surface to deep structure

     Bob killed the young deer

     The young deer was killed by Bob

     Bob killed the deer that was young

these all have DIFFERENT surface structures but same DEEP:



    /      \

NP              VP

|              / \

Bob       killed deer         

proposition: killed(Bob, deer)

we represent sentence information BOTH in terms of exact

words AND as propositions     

What are propositions?

     Basic representations of the meaning of a phrase

     Network of concepts that are related by the phrase


   surface memory is short-lived (sachs)

   long term memory based on meaning (Bransford semantic integration expts)

2. How do we understand a whole text when it is a series of propositions?

     We lay foundation by creating structures (propositions)

          We build separate "structures" for unrelated information


                  It takes us longer to read the first sentence     

                  The first person mentioned has a memory advantage

                  again, words in same structure prime each other

     We look for ways to MAP across structures

     We use semantic knowledge to elaborate
        FAN EFFECT

        (the more unrelated ideas, the smaller the proportion 

        that are recalled)
        Elaborated propositions are recalled better
        (the fat man read the sign about thin ice)
        Especially when there is a causal link

When you MAP across structures and create relations or introduce concepts 

that were not mentioned in the text you have made an INFERENCE

3. We "read" more than is there

     language is not completely specified, some relations between sentences 

are IMPLIED and we make INFERENCES using basic linguistic assumptions and

prior knowledge

4. Kintsch calls the process of making inferences between structures, 

and between text and memory INTEGRATION

He has proposed a model of text processing called the CONSTRUCTION/INTEGRATION 

model that has three levels:

     Surface level -- exact words

     Propositional level -- meaning of phrases that were actually mentioned

     Situation Model

At the third level of representation "the situation model" 

we integrate the "gist" of the sentences we read with our

information in memory, and this is what we recall especially after a


     THIS IS WHERE "SCHEMAS" have an effect

Further, the more effort we put into the situation model -- the more we


The more elaboration, the better memory

The more explanation, the better memory