Reading is one of the most sophisticated demonstrations of human pattern recognition and symbolic processing skill. Skilled readers effortlessly comprehend written text at rates of at least 300 words per minute, despite the complex interactions between perceptual, cognitive and memory processes required for effective comprehension. Understanding how we achieve this remarkable feat has been a focus of investigation since the birth of experimental psychology. Over the last two decades, visual word recognition has been at the forefront of developments in cognitive science. This book brings together many of the most influential contributors to these developments to reflect on current issues in the cognitive science of lexical processing and the methods required for further progress. The first section focuses on computational models. Written words provide a fertile context for large-scale modeling and the domain of lexical retrieval has become a test-bed for evaluating competing theoretical frameworks. The later sections draw upon cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science and neuroscience to elaborate critical theoretical issues and to develop novel research tools. From Inkmarks to Ideas provides advanced students and researchers with a comprehensive overview of the critical theoretical and empirical controversies in current research on the cognitive science of lexical processing and reading.

Provides a comprehensive overview of the critical theoretical and empirical controversies in current research on the cognitive science of lexical processing and reading.

Reading is a highly complex skill that is prerequisite to success in many societies in which a great deal of information is communicated in written form. Since the 1970s, much has been learned about the reading process from research by cognitive psychologists. This book summarizes that important work and puts it into a coherent framework. The book’s central theme is how readers go about extracting information from the printed page and comprehending the text. Like its predecessor, this thoroughly updated 2nd Edition encompasses all aspects of the psychology of reading with chapters on writing systems, word recognition, the work of the eyes during reading, inner speech, sentence processing, discourse processing, learning to read, dyslexia, individual differences and speed reading. Psychology of Reading, 2nd Edition, is essential reading for undergraduates, graduates, and researchers in cognitive psychology and could be used as a core textbook on courses on the psychology of reading and related topics. In addition, the clear writing style makes the book accessible to people without a background in psychology but who have a personal or professional interest in the process of reading.

A new look at how reading was practised and represented in England from the seventh century to the beginnings of the print era, finding many kinships between reading cultures across the medieval longue durée.

The central unifying theme of this state-of-the-art contribution to research on literacy is its rethinking and reconceptualization of individual differences in reading. Previous research, focused on cognitive components of reading, signaled the need for ongoing work to identify relevant individual differences in reading, to determine the relationship(s) of individual differences to reading development, and to account for interactions among individual differences. Addressing developments in each of these areas, this volume also describes affective individual differences, and the environments in which individual differences in reading may emerge, operate, interact, and change. The scant comprehensive accounting of individual differences in reading is reflected in the nature of reading instruction programs today, the outcomes that are expected from successful teaching and learning, and the manner in which reading development is assessed. An important contribution of this volume is to provide prima facie evidence of the benefits of broad conceptualization of the ways in which readers differ. The Handbook of Individual Differences in Reading moves the field forward by encompassing cognitive, non-cognitive, contextual, and methodological concerns. Its breadth of coverage serves as both a useful summary of the current state of knowledge and a guide for future work in this area.

The ability to communicate quickly and flexibly through both spoken and written language is one of the defining characteristics of the human race. Yet it remains a mysterious process. The science of psycholinguistics attempts to uncover the mechanisms and representations underlying human language. This interdisciplinary field has seen massive developments over the last decades, with a broad expansion of the research base, and the incorporation of new experimental techniques such as brain imaging and computational modelling. The result is that real progress is being made in the understanding of the key components of language in the mind. This new and expanded edition of The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics brings together the views of over 80 experts in various domains of psycholinguistic research, offering a comprehensive and authoritative review of the field. With contributions from the fields of psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, attention, genetics, development, and neuropsychology divided into five themed sections, this new edition of The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics is unparalleled in its breadth of coverage. The comprehensive nature of this book coupled with the accessibility of the short chapter format makes this handbook essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of psychology, linguistics and neuroscience.

Word recognition is the component of reading which involves the identification of individual words. Together the two volumes of Visual Word Recognition offer a state-of-the-art overview of contemporary research from leading figures in the field. This first volume outlines established theory, new models and key experimental evidence used to investigate visual word recognition: lexical decision and word naming. It also considers methodological concerns: new developments in large databases, and how these have been applied to theoretical questions; and control considerations when dealing with words as stimuli. Finally, the book considers the visual-orthographic input to the word recognition system: from the left and right-hand sides of vision, through the processing of letters and their proximity, to the similarity and confusability of words, and the contribution of the spoken-phonological form of the word. The two volumes serve as a state-of-the-art, comprehensive overview of the field. They are essential reading for researchers of visual word recognition, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students of cognition and cognitive psychology, specifically the psychology of language and reading. They will also be of use to those working in education and speech-language therapy.