A developmental investigation of word length effects in reading using a new on-line word identification paradigm     

Bijeljac-Babic  Ranka  Millogo  Victor  Farioli  Fernand  Grainger  Jonathan 《Reading and writing》2004,17(4):411-431

Third and fifth grade children (average age 8.6and 10.6 years) and adult participants weretested with printed words of varying length ina new on-line identification task (theluminance increment paradigm, LIP) and aspeeded naming task. Effects of general length(length in letters, phonemes and syllables)were shown to decrease systematically with agein both tasks. Third grade children showedsubstantial effects of word length while theeffect practically disappeared in adults. Ingeneral, this developmental pattern was alsofound when separately examining effects ofphonological length (with length in lettersheld constant) and small unit length (withnumber of syllables held constant), althoughsome differences were observed in performancein the identification and the naming task. Thetwo tasks also showed different developmentalpatterns, with the greatest gain in performancearising between 3rd and 5th grade inthe naming task, and the largest improvementoccurring between 5th grade and adults inthe identification task. The results suggestthat the new luminance increment paradigm canbe usefully applied as an on-line measure ofprinted word perception in beginning readers.  相似文献