This entry introduces an integrated model of reading that situates the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) within the Reading Systems Framework (RSF). The LQH posits that skilled reading depends on high-quality lexical representations—precise and flexible mappings of orthographic, phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic features—stored in the mental lexicon. These representations facilitate automatic word identification, accurate meaning retrieval, and efficient word-to-text integration (WTI), forming the foundation of text comprehension. Extending this micro-level perspective, the RSF positions lexical quality (LQ) within a macro-level cognitive architecture where the lexicon bridges word identification and reading comprehension systems. The RSF integrates multiple knowledge systems (linguistic, orthographic, and general world knowledge) with higher-order processes (sentence parsing, inference generation, comprehension monitoring, and situation model construction), emphasizing the bidirectional interactions between lower-level lexical knowledge and higher-order text comprehension. Central to this model is WTI, a dynamic mechanism through which lexical representations are incrementally incorporated into a coherent mental model of the text. This integrated model carries important implications for theory refinement, empirical investigation, and evidence-based instructional practices.

The present study examined the longitudinal relationship between statistical learning (SL) and reading development among 191 typically developing children (M-age = 8.12 years). Children completed tasks assessing SL of Chinese orthographic regularities (positional and phonetic) and nonlinguistic patterns (visual and auditory), as well as reading (i.e., character, word, and sentence reading) and control measures at each time point. Results revealed a reciprocal association between orthographic SL and reading, whereas nonlinguistic SL showed a unidirectional effect-predicting later reading, but not the reverse. These findings suggest that SL supports reading acquisition through both domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms and that reading experience enhances children's sensitivity to orthographic structure over time.

Despite the rise of digital technologies, handwriting remains more effective than typing for learning visual forms and writing words. The visual analysis hypothesis suggests that displayed continuous movement trajectories benefit handwriting by encouraging detailed visual analysis of a script. Using Korean Hangul characters as novel visual forms, this study focused on the visuomotor component of written form reproduction, and examined the effectiveness of motor-sequence presentation for written-form reproduction, as well as whether this effectiveness was modulated by native-script experience and visual complexity. Seventy-eight college-level participants (40 native readers of a nonlinear script, Chinese, and 38 readers of linear scripts such as Spanish) completed a delayed copying task. Hangul characters varied in visual complexity (low, medium, high) and were presented either with or without animated motor sequences. Written form reproduction accuracy, response time (RT), and writing time (WT) were measured. Motor sequence reduced accuracy for medium- and high-complexity characters in both groups. Similarly, motor sequence lengthened WT, but this interference effect was only significant for higher-complexity characters in the linear group. In contrast, motor sequence shortened RTs in both groups across all levels of complexity. These findings suggest that motor sequence presentation may facilitate retrieval efficiency and motor planning of written forms (RT), consistent with the visual analysis hypothesis. However, it may increase cognitive load, hindering precision (accuracy) and execution of written form (WT). Implications for instructional design are discussed in the context of reproducing unfamiliar characters, including the need to tailor motor sequence visualization to the complexity of the materials, learners’ prior script experience, and instructional goals (accuracy or speed).

This study investigated how interlocutors’ linguistic competence affected L2 speakers’ lexical alignment and how the interlocutor effect was modulated by speakers’ proficiency. Chinese English as a Foreign Language speakers performed an online text-based picture-naming and -matching task with interlocutors of different perceived linguistic competences: an L1 interlocutor, an L2 interlocutor of higher proficiency or an L2 interlocutor of lower proficiency. We compared the magnitudes of L2 speakers’ lexical alignment across interlocutor conditions and examined whether the interlocutor effect varied with speakers’ L2 proficiency. Results showed that L2 speakers aligned more with the L1 interlocutor than the L2 interlocutor, indicating an effect of interlocutors’ language status (native vs. non-native). Moreover, L2 speakers’ lexical alignment with interlocutors of varying proficiency was differentially affected by their own proficiency levels. This study adds to the existing work by revealing the joint influence of the interlocutors’ competence and the speakers’ L2 proficiency on lexical alignment in L2 communication.

Numerous studies have investigated whether phonological activation in the bilingual lexicon is selective or non-selective, using the classic masked priming paradigm that manipulates the phonological relatedness between primes and targets across two languages. The priming effects, however, are mixed: some studies reported reduced reaction times due to the homophone primes, while others observed non-significant priming. In this meta-analysis, we sought to systematically examine whether there is indeed cross-language phonological priming and to identify the factors that may moderate its magnitude. Analyzing 75 effects from 23 articles, we observed a significant, facilitative phonological priming effect (standardized mean difference Hedge’s g = 0.45, SE = 0.07, p <.0001, 95

Previous studies have shown that higher socioeconomic status (SES) and richer home literacy environment (HLE) are associated with better reading outcomes in children with family risk for reading difficulties (RD). Yet, the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this association remain understudied. This study sought to fill in the gap using both behavioral and neuroimaging methodologies. Eighty-one native Mandarin-speaking children (age = 8.7-12.0 years) and their parents were recruited. Family history (FH) of RD and home environmental factors (SES and HLE) were collected, as well as children's diffusion MRI, reading-related cognitive skills (rapid automatized naming [RAN], phonological awareness [PA], and morphological awareness [MA]), and reading outcomes. Participants were divided into the following groups according to their FH of RD and current reading status: children with a FH of RD who showed typical development (FH+TD) or who developed RD (FH+RD), and a typically developing control group without a FH (FH-TD). Chain mediation analyses showed that in FH+TD, the number of children's books (NCB) was linked to the axial diffusivity (AxD) of children's right superior longitudinal fasciculus (rSLF). This neural metric was further linked to children's silent reading comprehension (SRC) via their MA. No such mediation relationship was shown in either FH+RD or FH-TD. These results suggest that reading-related cognitive skills constitute important pathways linking HLE and reading outcomes in at-risk children who developed typical reading skills, while the right-hemispheric white matter fiber tract may serve as one possible neural intermediary. Our findings have educational implications for developing early interventions that focus on enriching HLE to help mitigate the risk of RD. SUMMARY: Number of children's books (NCB) is uniquely associated with reading development in children with a family history (FH) of reading difficulties (RD) who nevertheless develop typical reading abilities. Rapid automatized naming (RAN) serves as a significant cognitive mediator for oral reading fluency (ORF), and morphological awareness (MA) for silent reading comprehension (SRC). One possible neural mechanism underlying the NCB → MA → SRC mediation pathway could be the white matter structure, rSLF-AxD. An updated operational definition is proposed and applied to identify protective factors in children at risk for RD. The chain mediation method is used to examine the multi-level pathways (environment-brain-cognition-behavior), as hypothesized by the Multiple Deficit Model (MDM) of reading development.

The current study investigated the association between home environment and children's reading outcomes, with a focus on the mediating roles of vocabulary and morphological awareness (MA) and the moderating roles of statistical learning (SL). A sample of 191 8-year-old Chinese children (92 girls) with diverse socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds completed assessments of vocabulary knowledge, MA, nonlinguistic visual and auditory SL, Chinese positional and phonetic SL, reading tasks, nonverbal reasoning, and verbal working memory. Results showed that both vocabulary and MA mediated the relationship between SES and reading, but only vocabulary mediated the relationship between home literacy environment (HLE) and reading. Importantly, children who were better in domain-specific SL, particularly those with strong Chinese radical positional SL, were less affected by SES disparities in reading outcomes. However, SL did not moderate the associations between HLE and reading outcomes. (c) 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecom

This meta-analysis investigated whether and to what extent explicit instruction improves statistical learning (SL). While some previous studies individually demonstrated significant effects of explicit instruction on SL, there is a lack of a systematic and quantitative synthesis of this line of work so as to provide specific and detailed guidance for future research. To bridge this gap, a comprehensive meta-analysis was carried out, providing a first careful examination of the effect of explicit instruction on SL. Our analysis revealed a significant improvement in SL performance (g = .49) as a result of explicit instruction. Furthermore, we studied various factors that potentially influence the magnitude of the effect size of explicit instruction on SL. Specifically, we showed that explicit instruction in audiovisual compared to single-modality SL produced a more substantial enhancement in SL performance. In addition, the effect of explicit instruction was more pronounced in the linguistic domain compared to the nonlinguistic domain. These findings not only confirm the positive influence of explicit instruction on SL but also shed light on the specific conditions under which explicit instruction is more beneficial. Our findings have important implications for future educational research on developing effective instructional practices that potentially support SL in classrooms.

Statistical Learning (SL) refers to human’s ability to detect regularities from environment Kirkham, N. Z. (2002) & Saffran, J. R. (1996). There has been a growing interest in understanding how sensitivity to statistical regularities influences learning to read. The current study systematically examined whether and how non-linguistic SL, Chinese SL, and English SL contribute to Chinese and English word reading among native Chinese-speaking 4th, 6th and 8th graders who learn English as a second language (L2). Children showed above-chance learning across all SL tasks and across all grades. In addition, developmental improvements were shown across at least two of the three grade ranges on all SL tasks. In terms of the contribution of SL to reading, non-linguistic auditory SL (ASL), English visual SL (VSL), and Chinese ASL accounted for a significant amount of variance in English L2 word reading. Non-linguistic ASL, Chinese VSL, English VSL, and English ASL accounted for a significant amount of variance in Chinese word reading. Our results provide clear and novel evidence for cross-linguistic contribution from Chinese SL to English reading, and from English SL to Chinese reading, highlighting a bi-directional relationship between SL in one language and reading in another language.

Derivational suffixes are known to play a crucial role in assigning stress to multi-syllabic words among native English speakers. However, it is unclear whether second language (L2) learners of English can effectively use derivational suffixes as stress cues in written words. To address this gap, we studied if native Chinese-speaking adults learning English as an L2 can use derivational cues to correctly assign lexical stress, and whether the frequency of these suffixes and their L2 language proficiency moderate this sensitivity. Utilizing a written stress assignment and a stress production task, participants saw a series of written stems and their derived forms and were asked to either choose a syllable to assign the stress (Experiment 1) or read it aloud (Experiment 2). Results showed that L2 learners are sensitive to derivational cues to lexical stress in English. Moreover, the strength of this sensitivity is dependent upon the suffix class, frequency, and L2 language proficiency. Specifically, in both experiments, participants made more correct stress shifts in derived forms with high compared to low nonneutral suffix frequency; however, it did not differ between high and low neutral suffix frequency. In addition, as participants’ English proficiency increased, their correct stress shifts increased significantly greater in those derived nonwords with nonneutral than neutral suffixes in the stress assignment task. These findings make a significant contribution to the limited literature on L2 learners' sensitivity to morpho-orthographic cues to lexical stress and support the proposed statistical learning mechanism, that is, L2 learners can implicitly learn statistical regularities from linguistic materials.

This study investigated the hypothesis of nonselective access to phonological representations in an integrated lexicon across logographic and alphabetic writing systems among Chinese L1 (first language)–English L2 (second language) bilinguals. We employed three experiments to test this hypothesis, including a lexical decision task (LDT) and a word naming task in Experiments 1 and 2 using the masked priming paradigm, and a self-paced sentence reading task in Experiment 3. Results from the LDT and the word naming task showed a significant homophone priming effect from L1 to L2, but not from L2 to L1. In the sentence reading task, we compared processing time between homophone error words and control words in the critical and spill-over regions. A slower processing effect in the homophone condition was observed in the spill-over region. Overall, these findings suggest that phonological priming occurs across a logographic and an alphabetic script in different tasks, whether reading isolated words or sentences. Bilingual reading involves an integrated bilingual lexicon that is independent of script similarity.

Assigning stress to polysyllabic words is a crucial aspect of reading aloud in English. Previous research demonstrated that native English speakers are sensitive to word endings as probabilistic orthographic cues to stress assignment. However, little is known about if second language (L2) learners of English are sensitive to word endings as cues to lexical stress. The current study investigated whether native Chinese-speakers learning English as a second language (ESL) are sensitive to word endings as probabilistic orthographic cues to lexical stress. Our ESL learners demonstrated sensitivity to word endings as cues in a stress-assignment task and a naming task. With the increase in language proficiency, ESL learners responded more accurately in the stress-assignment task. Moreover, stress position and language proficiency moderated the strength of the sensitivity, with a trochaic bias and better proficiency leading to better sensitivity in the stress-assignment task. However, as language proficiency increased, participants’ naming speed became faster in iambic but slower in trochaic patterns, reflecting the learners’ fledgling knowledge about the specific stress patterns associated with varying orthographic cues, especially in a demanding naming task. Taken together, the evidence from our ESL learners fits in the proposed statistical learning mechanism, that is, L2 learners are able to implicitly extract statistical regularities from linguistic materials, the orthographic cues to lexical stress in our study. Stress position and language proficiency both play a role in developing this sensitivity.

Statistical learning (SL) is defined as our ability to use statistics (e.g., frequencies or transitional probabilities) to detect implicit regularities in the environment. Limited research has examined the developmental trajectory of SL across domains and modalities, and no previous research has made systematic comparisons across domains, modalities, and languages using comparable tasks. The current study investigated the development of SL ability across 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old native Chinese-speaking children in non-linguistic visual and auditory SL, first-language Chinese visual and auditory SL, and second-language English visual and auditory SL. Results showed that children across the three age groups achieved all types of SL, and they performed better in visual modality than in auditory modality. Furthermore, while visual SL constantly improved from 9- to 11- to 13-year-olds, auditory SL improved only from 11- to 13-year-olds but not from 9- to 11-year-olds, which could be explained by the discrepancy in developmental trajectory between auditory language and working memory. This pattern of age and modality interaction was similar across non-linguistic Chinese and English SL. A significant interaction between modality and language type also showed that better learning was achieved in visual SL as compared with auditory SL in both non-linguistic and English stimuli. However, children performed similarly across the two modalities in Chinese, possibly due to the contribution of tonal information. Together, our findings point to the joint function of age, modality, and language type in SL development.

Orthographic learning is the process that supports children in becoming skilled word readers. How orthographic learning occurs has been one of the central questions in the scientific studies of reading. The present systematic review focuses on experimental studies of orthographic learning via self-teaching. It explains and discusses the universality and specificity of the Self-Teaching Hypothesis concerning written word learning among young children. To advance the Self-Teaching Hypothesis with existing empirical evidence, methodologies and critical findings on the roles of phonological recoding, context, and word property are reviewed and analyzed systematically across target languages and types of learners. Sixty-two experimental studies from 45 articles (1995-2022) were included in the current analysis. Ample discrepancies in methodologies exist across studies. Across writing systems, language-specific word properties affect children's self-teaching outcomes, yet evidence consistently suggests that the presence of phonological recoding supports self-teaching. Enhanced phonological recoding improves orthographic learning, whereas reduced phonological recoding hinders orthographic learning. In contrast, findings on the effect of meaningful context are mixed. Our findings advance the original Self-Teaching Hypothesis, reveal the gaps in the self-teaching research, and point out new directions for future work. Our findings also inform educational practices for enhancing written word learning.

This bottom-up study applied a corpus-driven approach to extract the major lexicalization models of English intransitive verbs (EIVs) through an analysis of their meanings under the Ideal Motion Event Category inspired by Talmy. A 710-photo specialized multimodal corpus of EIVs was constructed for this purpose. Data analysis showed that the major lexicalization models of EIVs include [Motion + Patient], [Motion + Manner], [Motion + Path], [Motion + Result], [Motion + Location], and [Motion + Purpose]. In-depth analysis of these models identified three major possible reasons why EIVs cannot originally take direct objects: the incorporation of [Patient], the inheritance of the intransitive feature, and the internalization of the actions expressed by EIVs. By comparing Chinese learners’ most misused EIVs with their corresponding Chinese verbs, the current study provides empirical data to illustrate why transitive misusages of EIVs might occur among Chinese learners. The findings of this study will help English learners and users better apply EIVs.

The phenomenon of negative transfer between languages has been a hot topic in second language acquisition. It can have an important impact on students' second language acquisition. Understanding the phenomenon of negative transfer through errors that occur during language learning can better regulate language acquisition in the process of second language learning and improve students' cognition of second language acquisition. The writing part of the IELTS test is a major difficulty for Chinese non-English majors to overcome. Then understanding the negative transfer phenomenon that occurs in their writing process is particularly important for them to improve their scores. This research is dedicated to the research and analysis of the types of errors and the reasons why Chinese non-English major students make mistakes in IELTS writing task 2. The study found that Chinese non-English major students experienced negative transfer between languages in IELTS writing task 2, which resulted in four main types of errors, namely errors in subject-verb agreement, double-predicate errors, and errors in tense of verbs and incomplete sentence structure. By summarizing and analyzing the types of errors caused by these negative transfers, this research hopes to provide corresponding guidance and inspiration for IELTS writing teaching and English writing for non-English major students.

The purpose of this meta-analytic review is to investigate the relation between statistical learning (SL) and language-related outcomes, and between SL and reading-related outcomes. A comprehensive search of peer-reviewed published research resulted in 42 articles with 53 independent samples and 201 reported effect sizes (Pearson's r). Results of our robust variance estimation correlated effects model revealed a significant, moderate relation between SL and language-related outcomes, r = .236, p < .001, and a significant, moderate relation between SL and reading-related outcomes, r = .239, p < .001. Moreover, age, the writing system of the language, and SL paradigm moderate the strength of the association between SL and reading. Age is the only significant moderator on the strength of the association between SL and language. The findings from this meta-analysis shed light on the contribution of multiple factors that impact how SL relates to language and reading outcomes, with important implications for developing effective instructional practices that emphasize statistical regularities of oral and written materials in the classroom. Theoretical implications of these findings for language and reading development are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The romanization of non-alphabetic scripts, particularly in digital contexts, is a widespread phenomenon across many languages. However, the effect of script romanization on English reading by bilinguals with English as a second language is underexamined. Guided by the premises of the script relativity hypothesis and the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA+) model, we examined differences in phonological activation during visual English word recognition by Hindi-English bilinguals after they were primed with interlingual homophones in Devanagari (traditional Hindi script) and Romanagari (romanized Hindi script). We also explored the specific roles played by diacritic markers and individual language proficiencies. Linear mixed-effects and regression modeling showed that participants were faster at English word recognition when primed by interlingual homophones in Romanagari than in Devanagari. Further, words with diacritics led to faster English word recognition than words without diacritics with both scripts. This was unexpected since Romanagari does not mark diacritics. Finally, lexical proficiency in English and Devanagari explained variance in phonological priming effects. The findings provide evidence that adopting an additional L1 script might reconfigure the architecture of the bilingual lexicon. Our results support the view that script differences play a critical role in language processing.