Caroline Castel

The role of orthography in speech production revisited.

The language production system of literate adults comprises an orthographic system (used during written language production) and a phonological system (used during spoken language production). Recent psycholinguistic research has investigated possible influences of the orthographic system on the phonological system. This research has produced contrastive results, with some studies showing effects of orthography in the course of normal speech production while others failing to show such effects. In this article, we review the available evidence and consider possible explanations for the discrepancy. We then report two form-preparation experiments which aimed at testing for the effects of orthography in spoken word-production. Our results provide clear evidence that the orthographic properties of the words do not influence their spoken production in picture naming. We discuss this finding in relation to psycholinguistic and neuropsychological investigations of the relationship between written and spoken word-production.

Mental subtraction in high- and lower skilled arithmetic problem solvers: verbal report versus operand-recognition paradigms.

The authors used the operand-recognition paradigm (C. Thevenot, M. Fanget, & M. Fayol, 2007) in order to study the strategies used by adults to solve subtraction problems. This paradigm capitalizes on the fact that algorithmic procedures degrade the memory traces of the operands. Therefore, greater difficulty in recognizing them is expected when calculations have been solved by reconstructive strategies rather than by retrieval of number facts from long-term memory. The present results suggest that low- and high-skilled individuals differ in their strategy when they solve problems involving minuends from 11 to 18. Whereas high-skilled individuals retrieve the results of such subtractions from long-term memory, lower skilled individuals have to resort to reconstructive strategies. Moreover, the authors directly confront the results obtained with the operand-recognition paradigm and those obtained with the more classical method of verbal report collection and show clearly that this second method of investigation fails to reveal this differential pattern. The rationale behind the operand-recognition paradigm is then discussed.

Lien entre dénomination rapide et lecture chez les enfants dyslexiques

Cette etude vise a mieux comprendre le lien entre denomination rapide (RAN ou Rapid Automatized Naming) et lecture. Une experience a ete realisee aupres d’enfants dyslexiques, dans laquelle nous avons compare deux versions du RAN: une version continue et une version discrete. Dans la version continue, tous les items a denommer sont presentes en meme temps sur papier (version classique), tandis que dans la version discrete, les items sont presentes successivement sur ordinateur, reduisant ainsi l’implication des facteurs visuo-attentionels (par exemple, controle oculaire). Pour chaque version, nous avons compare trois types de stimuli variant dans leur degre d’automaticite (i. e., des chiffres, des lettres et des objets). Nos resultats montrent que les enfants dyslexiques ont des deficits comparables dans les deux versions de la tâche ce qui suggere que les facteurs visuo-attentionels ne peuvent expliquer a eux seuls le deficit obtenu dans RAN. Par ailleurs, la comparaison des differents types de stimuli ne permet pas de conclure en faveur d’un deficit general lie a l’automatisation des processus cognitifs. En revanche, nos resultats suggerent que les enfants dyslexiques ont des problemes pour acceder de facon rapide et automatique aux representations phonologiques, une capacite fondamentale pour l’apprentissage de la lecture.

Ten-year-old children strategies in mental addition: A counting model account.

For more than 30 years, it has been admitted that individuals from the age of 10 mainly retrieve the answer of simple additions from long-term memory, at least when the sum does not exceed 10. Nevertheless, recent studies challenge this assumption and suggest that expert adults use fast, compacted and unconscious procedures in order to solve very simple problems such as 3+2. If this is true, automated procedures should be rooted in earlier strategies and therefore observable in their non-compacted form in children. Thus, contrary to the dominant theoretical position, childrens behaviors should not reflect retrieval. This is precisely what we observed in analyzing the responses times of a sample of 42 10-year-old children who solved additions with operands from 1 to 9. Our results converge towards the conclusion that 10-year-old children still use counting procedures in order to solve non-tie problems involving operands from 2 to 4. Moreover, these counting procedures are revealed whatever the expertise of children, who differ only in their speed of execution. Therefore and contrary to the dominant position in the literature according to which childrens strategies evolve from counting to retrieval, the key change in development of mental addition solving appears to be a shift from slow to quick counting procedures.

The role of fingers in number processing in young children

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between finger counting and numerical processing in 4–7-year-old children. Children were assessed on a variety of numerical tasks and we examined the correlations between their rates of success and their frequency of finger use in a counting task. We showed that childrens performance on finger pattern comparison and identification tasks did not correlate with the frequency of finger use. However, this last variable correlated with the percentages of correct responses in an enumeration task (i.e., Give-N task), even when the age of children was entered as a covariate in the analysis. Despite this correlation, we showed that some children who never used their fingers in the counting task were able to perform optimally in the enumeration task. Overall, our results support the conclusion that finger counting is useful but not necessary to develop accurate symbolic numerical skills. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of fingers in a counting task is related to the ability of children in a dynamic enumeration task but not to static tasks involving recognition or comparison of finger patterns. Therefore, it could be that the link between fingers and numbers remain circumscribed to counting tasks and do not extent to static finger montring situations.

Numerical Abilities in Children With Congenital Hemiplegia: An Investigation of the Role of Finger Use in Number Processing

In this study, we assessed basic and more complex non-symbolic and symbolic numerical task abilities in children with hemiplegia and obtained a detailed picture of their strengths and weaknesses in the numerical domain. Those children, who experience difficulties in finger gnosia and spontaneous use of fingers in counting, exhibit difficulties in finger pattern recognition and symbolic numerical tasks. However, their non-symbolic numerical abilities and arithmetic skills are preserved. These original results are discussed in light of the “manumerical cognition” hypothesis, which postulates that the use of fingers in numerical activities during childhood shapes our comprehension of numbers.

Relationship and transfer between mental and written arithmetic

In a first experiment, adults practiced single- and two-digit mental addition over a 6-day period. There was a clear training effect for both types of problems, even if two-digit additions were different from one day to another. Moreover, participants were tested on their written calculation abilities before and after the training programme. We showed that participants who entered the mental arithmetic training programme did not progress more in written arithmetic than participants who did not receive any training between the pre- and the post-tests. Conversely, in a second experiment, participants were trained in multidigit written addition and we examined the effect of such training on single- and two-digit mental addition. Again and trivially, there was a clear effect of training on written addition, but, more importantly, a transfer on mental addition. The implications of these results on the nature of the relationship between mental and written arithmetic are discussed.

Better elementary number processing in higher skill arithmetic problem solvers: Evidence from the encoding step

This paper addresses the relationship between basic numerical processes and higher level numerical abilities in normal achieving adults. In the first experiment we inferred the elementary numerical abilities of university students from the time they needed to encode numerical information involved in complex additions and subtractions. We interpreted the shorter encoding times in good arithmetic problem solvers as revealing clearer or more accessible representations of numbers. The second experiment shows that these results cannot be due to the fact that lower skilled individuals experience more maths anxiety or put more cognitive efforts into calculations than do higher skilled individuals. Moreover, the third experiment involving non-numerical information supports the hypothesis that these interindividual differences are specific to number processing. The possible causal relationships between basic and higher level numerical abilities are discussed.

Les compétences numériques chez de jeunes enfants prématurés

Resume Des difficultes en mathematiques sont souvent rapportees chez les enfants prematures mais nous ne savons pas si elles resultent de deficits cognitifs generaux ou bien de troubles specifiques des habiletes numeriques. Afin de repondre a cette question, nous avons compare les performances d’enfants de 5 ans nes prematurement ou a terme sur leurs competences cognitives generales (c’est-a-dire, intelligence, niveau de langage et vitesse de traitement) et sur des epreuves de comparaison de quantites non symboliques (c’est-a-dire, collections d’objets) ou symboliques (c’est-a-dire, numeraux verbaux et chiffres arabes). Nos resultats mettent en evidence des difficultes specifiques de production de la chaine numerique verbale ainsi que des effets de distance numerique plus importants chez les enfants prematures que chez les enfants nes a terme. Les enfants prematures semblent donc presenter un trouble du sens du nombre non reductible a une atteinte cognitive generale, similaire a celui mis en evidence chez les enfants dyscalculiques.

Strategies for written additions in adults

Studies about strategies used by adults to solve multi-digit written additions are very scarce. However, as advocated here, the specificity and characteristics of written calculations are of undeniable interest. The originality of our approach lies in part in the presentation of two-digit addition problems on a graphics tablet, which allowed us to precisely follow and analyse individuals’ solving process. Not only classic solution times and accuracy measures were recorded but also initiation times and starting positions of the calculations. Our results show that adults largely prefer the fixed columnar strategy taught at school rather than more flexible mental strategies. Moreover, the columnar strategy is executed faster and as accurately as other strategies, which suggests that individuals’ choice is usually well adapted. This result contradicts past educational intuitions that the use of rigid algorithms might be detrimental to performance. We also demonstrate that a minority of adults can modulate their strategy choice as a function of the characteristics of the problems. Tie problems and additions without carry were indeed solved less frequently through the columnar strategy than non-tie problems and additions with a carry. We conclude that the working memory demand of the arithmetic operation influences strategy selection in written problem-solving.