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Many low-skill readers have problems with visual word recognition. In particular, low-skill readers show a substantial nonword reading deficit that is attributed to deficits in sub-lexical processing. In this study, I examined whether the nonword deficits of German 14-year-old low-skill readers were associated with inefficient use of multi-letter information. In a lexical-decision experiment, words and nonwords were presented in standard format and in MiXeD cAsE format which has been shown to be especially disrupting for sub-lexical processing. When the stimuli were presented in standard format, low-skill readers showed a substantial nonword reading deficit, that is they were generally slower than high-skill readers, but had special problems with decoding nonwords. However, when stimuli were presented in MiXeD cAsE, low- and high-skill readers showed equal impairments in nonword processing. This finding indicates that low-skill readers do not use context-sensitive multi-letter rules during phonological assembly in normal reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Abstract Investigating the impact of linguistic characteristics on visual word recognition in children, we studied whether differences in native (L1) and second language (L2) processing already emerge at the beginning of reading development. German elementary school students in grades 2 to 6 completed a battery of standardized tests and a lexical decision task (LDT). Though L1 speakers outperformed L2 speakers on German skills, groups did not differ in their overall performance on the LDT. However, results from mixed-effect models revealed greater effects for word frequency and length in L2 over L1 speakers, indicating qualitative differences in the sensitivity to linguistic information between groups. This distinction persisted across all grades and after controlling for differences in vocabulary size and reading fluency. Findings extend evidence provided for adult L2 processing, suggesting that varying language exposure shapes the development of the word-recognition system already in the early stages of reading development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Teachers' diagnostic skills are important prerequisites for the planning, delivery, and evaluation of lessons. Learning materials incorporating instructional pictures are the basis for lessons in many subjects. Against this background, the present study investigated the levels and correlations of teachers' diagnostic skills in the area of text-picture integration, potential teacher- or material-specific moderator variables, as well as determinants of the diagnostic process. Participants were 116 teachers with 48 grade 5 to 8 classes in different school types. Teachers' diagnostic skills were found to be weak to moderate, with teachers tending to underestimate their students' performance. Heterogeneous patterns of results emerged for correlations with pedagogical content knowledge and teaching experience, and overall difficulty estimates were found to be relevant in addition to task-specific judgments within the diagnostic process. Implications for practice and further research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Extending our understanding of the interplay between visual and cognitive processes during reading is essential to understand how reading develops and changes across the lifespan. Monitoring readers' eye movements provides a fine-grained online protocol of the reading process as it evolves over time, but until recently eye movements have rarely been collected for young developing and ageing people. Developmental eye-tracking constitutes an emerging and innovative field that addresses various theoretical questions related to changes in the process of reading across the lifespan and the mechanisms that drive intra-individual trajectories and create inter-individual differences among readers. The aim of this editorial is to briefly summarise the current state of the field and to outline which questions are currently being investigated and presented in this Special Issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

We investigated lexical decision making in children and adults by analyzing spatiotemporal characteristics of responses involving a hand movement. Children’s and adults’ movement trajectories were assessed in three tasks: a lexical decision task (LDT), a pointing task that involved minimal cognitive processing, and a symbol task requiring a simple binary decision. Cognitive interference on motor performance was quantified by analyzing movement characteristics in the LDT and symbol task relative to the pointing task. Across age groups, movements in the LDT were less smooth, slower, and more strongly curved to the opposite response option, and these interference effects decreased steadily with age. Older children showed stronger interference effects than did adults, even though their reaction times were similar to adults’ performance. No comparable effects were found in the symbol task, indicating that task characteristics such as response mapping and decision selection alone are not able to explain the developmental differences observed in the LDT. Our results indicate substantial overlap between cognitive processing and motor execution in the LDT in children that is not captured by computational models of visual word recognition and cognitive development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Phonological and orthographic information has been shown to play an important role in parafoveal processing in skilled adult reading in English. In the present study, we investigated whether similar parafoveal effects can be found in children using the boundary eye tracking method. Children and adults read sentences in German with embedded target nouns which were presented in original, pseudohomophone (PsH), transposed-letter (TL), lower-case and control conditions to assess phonological and orthographic preview effects. We found evidence of PsH preview benefit effects for children. We also found TL preview benefit effects for adults, while children only showed these effects under specific conditions. Results are consistent with the developmental view that reading initially depends on phonological processes and that orthographic processes become increasingly important. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

The question how agent and patient roles are assigned to causal participants has largely been neglected in the psychological literature on force dynamics. Based on the linguistic theory of Dowty (1991), we propose that agency is a prototype concept. We adapted Dowty's theory to account for scenarios showing physical interactions. In the standard Michotte launching scenario the ball entering the scene is usually assigned the agent role, whereas the ball that is being launched is viewed as the patient. We showed in two experiments that agency intuitions were moderated by manipulations of the context prior to the launching event. Altering features such as relative movement, sequence of visibility, and self-propelled motion tended to increase agency attributions to the patient relative to the standard scenario. We suspect that shifts in figure-ground perceptions, and intuitions about characteristics of interventions may be the overarching reason for the efficacy of the tested criteria.

Whereas the traditional normative benchmark for diagnostic reasoning from effects to causes is provided by purely statistical norms, we here approach the task from the perspective of rational causal inference. The core feature of the presented model is the assumption that diagnostic inferences are constrained by hypotheses about the causal texture of the domain. As a consequence, the model's predictions systematically deviate from classical, purely statistical norms of diagnostic inference. In particular, the analysis reveals that diagnostic judgments should not only be influenced by the probability of the cause given the effect, but also be systematically affected by the predictive relation between cause and effect. This prediction is tested in three studies. The obtained pattern of diagnostic reasoning is at variance with the traditional statistical norm but consistent with a model of rational causal inference.