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BEHAVIORAL AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF SEMANTIC PROCESSING IN SKILLED AND LESS-SKILLED COMPREHENDERS

Landi, Nicole (2005) BEHAVIORAL AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF SEMANTIC PROCESSING IN SKILLED AND LESS-SKILLED COMPREHENDERS. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Theorists of reading comprehension failure are split between two groups: those that posit low-level word reading skills and phonological awareness as underlying factors of poor comprehension ability and those that consider poor comprehension as partially independent of these low-level skills. Several studies with children have now demonstrated that poor comprehenders with adequate decoding skills make up a small but significant proportion of poor readers. One promising hypothesis posits that semantic processing deficits underlie these children's comprehension difficulties. This hypothesis was supported by findings that demonstrated less-skilled comprehenders to show poorer than average performance on a variety of semantic tasks. In order to test whether these findings would generalize to adult poor comprehenders, we evaluated the dissociability of high-level and low-level skills in adults. In addition, we evaluated whether adult less-skilled comprehenders (with adequate decoding abilities) have semantic processing difficulties. A PCA compared the reading skills of large group of college aged readers and found that high level skills such as reading comprehension and vocabulary were partly dissociable from low-level reading skills such as decoding ability. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the semantic processing deficit hypothesis, adult skilled and less-skilled comprehenders were compared on several behavioral and electrophysiological tests of semantic and phonological processing. The findings from these studies revealed that less-skilled comprehenders generated fewer semantic associates in a verbal fluency task and showed reduced categorical priming in an automatic semantic priming task. Additionally, electrophysiological records of less-skilled comprehenders differed from skilled readers during a semantic processing task but no during a phonological processing task. Taken together these findings provide evidence that supports semantic knowledge/semantic processing differences between skilled and less-skilled comprehenders. Implications of these findings are discussed within the construct of an experience based model of semantic knowledge acquisition.


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Details

Item Type: University of Pittsburgh ETD
Status: Unpublished
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Landi, Nicolenil3@pitt.eduNIL3
ETD Committee:
TitleMemberEmail AddressPitt UsernameORCID
Committee ChairPerfetti, Charles Aperfetti@pitt.eduPERFETTI
Committee MemberReichle, Erik Dreichle@pitt.eduREICHLE
Committee MemberBeck, Isabelibeck@pitt.eduIBECK
Committee MemberFiez, Julie Afiez@pitt.eduFIEZ
Date: 5 October 2005
Date Type: Completion
Defense Date: 5 August 2005
Approval Date: 5 October 2005
Submission Date: 18 August 2005
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: PhD - Doctor of Philosophy
Thesis Type: Doctoral Dissertation
Refereed: Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords: Comprehension; Reading; Semantics
Other ID: http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08182005-133452/, etd-08182005-133452
Date Deposited: 10 Nov 2011 20:00
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2016 13:49
URI: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9175

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