Context effects on heterophonic-homography resolution in learning to read hebrew

• DOI: 10.1007/s11145-016-9685-1
• Publication Date: 2016-09-13T12:01:07Z
• Authors: Amalia Bar-On; Elitzur Dattner; Dorit Ravid
• Keywords: 05 social sciences; 0503 education

The paper examines the role of context in reading unpointed Hebrew, demonstrating the changing nature of reliance on context during the course of reading acquisition. We analyze the reading-aloud of sentences with heterographic-homographic ambiguity, aiming to shed light on the development of ambiguity resolution processes in typically developing schoolaged and adult populations. 171 Hebrew-speaking children and adolescents in seven age/schooling groups (beginning and end of second grade, third, fourth, seventh, and eleventh grade), and a group of adults, participated in the study. Using homographic garden-path and non-Garden-path sentences, we demonstrate the cumulative effect of context as well as processes of monitoring cum reanalysis. Two hypotheses are borne out in the present research: First, context effect is inherent to reading; it is present throughout all age/grade groups, becoming more efficient with age/grade level. Second, monitoring and reanalysis lag far behind context effects, appearing only as age and reading experience increase.