Why johnny can read: the role of statistical regularities in reading and connectionist modeling

OF THE DISSERTATION Why Johnny Can Read: The Role of Statistical Regularities in Reading and Connectionist Modeling by Jeanne Claire Milostan Doctor of Philosophy in Cognitive Science and Computer Science University of California, San Diego, 1999 Professor Garrison W. Cottrell, Chair As is true for almost all computational modeling of higher brain functions, debate currently rages over models which address the ability to read. Three current models (the single-route connectionist system of (Plaut et al., 1996), the Dual-Route Cascade of (Coltheart et al., 1993), and the connectionist Dual-Process model of (Zorzi et al., 1998b)) are examined in relation to various human reading data. An apparently serial e ect seen in irregular words, where early irregularities cause more slowing in pronunciation time than late irregularities, is reanalyzed with respect to enemy/friend ratios, and the results of subject experiments are presented. The work of (Plaut et al., 1996) is extended to handle multisyllabic words, modeling the e ect seen in the human studies, and thus showing that the position-of-irregularity e ect is not a serial phenomena after all. xv Chapter