Balass, Michal
(2005)
Individual Differences in Representations of Newly Learned Words: An Event -Related Investigation.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Adults of varying comprehension skill were trained on a set of previously unknown rare English words (e.g. gloaming) in three different learning conditions which manipulated the type of word knowledge that participants learned about the words. Trained words were presented in one of three conditions: (1) Orthography- to- Meaning (no phonology); (2) Orthography- to- Phonology (no meaning); and (3) Phonology- to- Meaning (no orthography). Following training, participants made meaning judgments about the trained words in addition to familiar known words and untrained rare words while their ERPs were recorded. Behavioral results showed no significant differences of comprehension on meaning relatedness task performance. ERP recordings segmented after the presentation of the first word indicated skill differences in amplitude and latency for N400 and P600 components. Less skilled comprehenders showed larger N400 effects for phonology to meaning trained words than high skilled comprehenders indicating that they were not successful at making an orthographic representation from phonological information that was given in training. P600 results indicated that low skilled comprehenders showed no specific episodic effects for trained words versus untrained words, while high skilled comprehenders showed a modified P600 'old/new' effect for rare words versus known words. These results demonstrated that ERPs provide distinctive information about how newly- learned words are represented, and how these new representations differ with individual differences in comprehension skill.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
| Title | Member | Email Address | Pitt Username | ORCID |
|---|
| Committee Chair | Perfetti, Charles A | | | | | Committee Member | Reichle, Erik D | | | | | Committee Member | Fiez, Julie A | | | |
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| Date: |
2 February 2005 |
| Date Type: |
Completion |
| Defense Date: |
10 November 2004 |
| Approval Date: |
2 February 2005 |
| Submission Date: |
9 December 2004 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology |
| Degree: |
MS - Master of Science |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
ERP; individual differences; reading skill; word learning |
| Other ID: |
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12092004-152523/, etd-12092004-152523 |
| Date Deposited: |
10 Nov 2011 20:09 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 13:54 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/10236 |
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