engleski

Inherent features of pseudowords and their importance in examining phonological processing

Pseudowords are legal non-words that satisfy the phonological and orthographic rules of a language, but not semantic ones. Tasks of repeating and reading pseudowords are considered a prototype measure of phonological processing. Since phonological processing is a core difficulty for persons with dyslexia, pseudowords should be examined in any test of reading abilities. With the aim to develop a valid and reliable test for dyslexia in Croatian, a language with transparent orthography, we made a list of pseudowords, controlling for linguistic features that affect processing: length, segmental complexity, phonotactic probability, and wordlikeness. We tested 199 typically developing 2nd - 4th grade children (NMale=100, NFemale=99, Mage=9.2 ; SD=0.9), and the next step is to test children with dyslexia, as well. Preliminary data show a correlation between inherent features of pseudowords and their difficulty. E.g., there is a moderate to large correlation between wordlikeness and item difficulty in repetition (p<0.03 ; r=0.51) and reading (p<0.01 ; r=0.66) in the youngest group, meaning that a higher value of wordlikeness ensures easier repetition and reading. In this presentation the importance of controlling for inherent features of pseudowords for the purpose of examining phonological processing in different populations will be presented on the example of data from Croatian.

Pseudowords ; dyslexia ; length ; segmental complexity ; wordlikeness

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