Anglocentrism in Current Reading

Research and Practice

David L. Share

Anglocentrism in Current Reading Research and Practice: Implications for the Diagnosis and Assessment of Dyslexia in

European alphabets

David L. Share

Department of Learning Disabilities

Faculty of EducationUniversity of Haifa

EDA, Växjö, Sweden ,September, 2013

Overall plan

• General introductory comments• Anglocentrism briefly reviewed• Some more Anglocentrisms• Eurocentrism and alphabetism• Suggestions for de-tox

New generation of cognitive research: Emphasizing variability rather than invariance

Enormous diversity across and within cultures

The weirdest people in the world?(Henrich, Heine, Norenzayana, BBS, 2010)

“Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing

about humans.”.

The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science

“Languages are much more diverse in structure than cognitive scientists generally appreciate. A widespread assumption among cognitive scientists, growing out of the generative tradition in linguistics, is that all languages are English-like but with different sounds systems and vocabularies. The true picture is very different: languages differ so fundamentally from one another at every level of description (sound, grammar, lexicon, meaning) that it is very hard to find any single structural property they share.”

(Evans & Levinson, BBS, 2009 p. 429)

In literacy, there’s an additional (acute) problem

• Most theory and practice in current literacy research has grown out of studies conducted in English.

Unfortunately…

• English orthography is not like other alphabetic orthographies owing to its extreme spelling-sound irregularity

ofwastwo

thoroughknightyachtpthisis

Extreme ambiguity/irregularity of English spelling-sound

correspondence

Because English orthography is so idiosyncratic, much of reading research confined to narrow Anglocentric research agenda addressing theoretical and applied issues with only limited relevance for a universal science of reading and literacy.

(Share, 2008, Psychological Bulletin)

1. Focused disproportionate attention on

oral reading accuracy at the expense of silent reading, meaning access and fluency

English spelling-sound irregularity has

2. Distorted thinking about…

• Role of phonological awareness• Timing and content of reading

instruction• The “stages” of reading

development• Definition and remediation of

reading disability• Role of lexical-semantic and supra-

lexical (i.e. contextual information) in word recognition.

And (3) has blinkered theorizing

• Dominant theoretical paradigm – dual-route theory, largely response to English spelling-sound inconsistency. But ill-equipped to serve the interests of a universal science of reading because it overlooks a more fundamental dualism applicable to all readers in all orthographies

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1. English: A “freak” orthography(statistical outlier)

Learning to decode English is extraordinarily difficult

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2. Dual-route theory of word reading and the challenges of irregularity

• Dual-route theory still benchmark status

• Central dual-route axiom (Coltheart)

No single procedure can handle (correctly pronounce) nonwords (slint) and exception words (pint).

When irregularity is the exception to the rule

• Is a second (lexical) route needed when no exception words? Relevant only to English?

Fundamental and overarching dualism overlooked – applies to all words in all orthographies

1. All words novel at some point – algorithm needed for independently identifying words first encountered (see Share, 1995)

2. Reader must be able to achieve high degree of automatization in word recognition (direct retrieval)

Universalistic “novice-to-expert” or “unfamiliar-to-familiar” dualism1. Merges study of reading with

human skill learning in general: Transition from slow, deliberating, step-by-step unskilled performance to rapid one-step skilled performance.

2. Converges with dualistic nature of efficient orthography – compromise between needs of

novice (decipherability) and expert (automatizability)

Efficient orthography must provide A means for deciphering new words

independently

but also…

This algorithmic process must lay foundations for rapid direct-retrieval mechanism (self-teaching, Share, 1995, 2008)

Efficient orthography must also…

Provide visually distinct word-specific (or morpheme-specific) visual-orthographic configurations required for the unitization and automatization of skilled word recognition (knight/night, piece/peace).

3. Over-emphasis on accuracy• Given extreme spelling-sound ambiguity,

deriving accurate pronunciation most pressing concern; if new word not accurately identified entire word-learning process derailed.

• In regular orthographies accuracy asymptotes early and speed/fluency becomes critical issue in individual and developmental differences. But topic of fluency only now receiving attention

Traditional Anglo-American definitions of dyslexia

Accuracy-based Word identification and/or Word Attack (decoding pseudowords)

British Psychological Association definition of dyslexia

(borrowing Dutch fluency-based definition)

• Dyslexia is evident when accurate and fluent word reading and/or spelling develops very incompletely or with great difficulty. BPS (1999) (Rose, 2009)

• IDA definition (Lyon et al. 2003)

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4. Over-emphasis on oral reading

• Reading aloud does not necessarily involve access to meaning

• Slower, more exhaustive phonological representations (Elbro)

• less orthographic processing and morphology

• brain pathways different • dissociations• Eye movements are different

4. Over-emphasis on oral reading

Silent reading today’s literacy benchmark

Non-trivial differences between oral and silent reading

Over-reliance on oral reading may not provide a complete picture of word recognition strengths and weaknesses

5 .Instructional Anglocentrisms: Timing and content of reading

instruction

• English orthography changeswhen we teachhow we teach

6. Definition and remediation of reading disability/dyslexia (and subtypes)

• The 3-year learning-to-read period in English and the “Wait-to-fail” (IQ-discrepancy) model

IQ-discrepancy (wait-to-fail) model

• Requires severe discrepancy not usually evident until around 3 years after school entry.

• Bias against early identification

Dyslexia subtyping and the dual-route model

Basis: reading accuracy for words varying in regularity

• Phonological dyslexia– poor nonword reading (non-lexical

route), good at exception word reading (lexical route)

• Surface dyslexia – Poor exception word reading (lexical),

but good at nonword reading (non-lexical)

Accuracy/rate subtyping

•Leinonen, Muller, Leppanen, Aro, Ahonen, & Lyytinen (2001) hasty/hesitant

Hesitant slow but accurateHasty fast but inaccurate

Accuracy/Rate double dissociation in Hebrew

(Shany & Share, 2012)

• Rate-disabled normal accuracy, slow RAN

• Accuracy-disablednormal rate, poor phonological awareness and morphological

knowledge

Shany & Share, Annals of Dyslexia, 2012

Anglocentric reviewing

“I find it difficult to label children who read and decode as accurately but not as fast as normally developing readers as dyslexic or “disabled” readers.”

(Anonymous (Anglocentric) reviewer, 2010)

Even More Anglocentrisms ?

1. Onsets & Rimes

2. Diacritics

General conclusionsCommonalities and universals

Unfamiliar-to-familiar/novice-to-expert dualism.

Because all words initially unfamiliar, decipherability critical, hence sublexical units must be represented and phonological awareness required (phonological “universal”).

Expert reading similar across scripts: automaticity and fluency.

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New shift from Anglocentrism to

Eurocentrism

But• most writing systems are not

alphabetic, and even most alphabets are not Roman-based.

Eurocentrism and Alphabetism

Many Western scholars – (Gelb, Havelock), assume that alphabets are superior/optimal.

“The basic difference between Western alphabetic and East Asian syllabic writing acts on several levels to promote or inhibit creativity, particularly that associated with breakthroughs in science…syllabic literacy entails a diminished propensity for abstract and analytical thought…Certain Asian characteristics credited with blocking creativity, such as conservative political and social institutions and group-oriented behavior, derive in part from effects that the orthography has had on the minds of individuals, (Hannas, 2003)

Many theories of literacy development (reading and spelling) also alphabetist

“ Taking the final step toward the creation of a true alphabetic writing system, the Greeks assigned a symbol to each consonant and vowel of their language…In many ways, the individual development of the children who are discovering the alphabetic principle in English writing recapitulates human history, Moats, 2000, p. 82-83

Globalization of the alphabet

European alphabets disseminated by Christian missionaries (over 1000 languages).

Common motto ”Consonants as in English, vowels as in Italian”

Ideal orthography one letter one sound (phoneme) vowels and consonants

Are alphabets (alpha)best?(4 illustrations)

1.Asfaha, Kurbers & Kroon (2009)’s study in Eritrea

Tigrinya and Tigre languages with a CV alphasyllabic script (Ge'ez)

Kunama and Saho have alphabetic Roman-based scripts.

Asfaha et al: Results

• Grade 1 children learned to read the syllabic Ge'ez much more easily than the alphabetic scripts

• Syllabic teaching of alphabetic Saho produced better results than alphabetic teaching of (alphabetic) Kunama.

2 .Hanuno’o alphasyllabary in the Phillipines

• Indigenous Indic scripts marginalized under Western colonial (Spanish) influence in all but the least accessible places

• Reports of high literacy levels among the Hanuno’o.

3 .Dinka in Southern Sudan

• Dinka orthography is a European Roman-based orthography but reported to be extraordinarily difficult to read (John Myhill).

(Lack of tone marking to blame?)

4. Another case of Alphabetism?

Hebrew and Arabic writing are not alphabets, but abjads

• Alphabet: Represents consonantal and vowel phonemes

• Hebrew and Arabic are abjads representing consonantal phonemes. Vowels represented only in a subsidiary manner, incompletely and inconsistently. Full vowel representation only for beginners or special circumstances.

De-ToxFrom Ptolemy to CopernicusBack to Henrich et al and WEIRD

psychologyAbandon our “universalizing”

bias

1. ModestyClaim X in English

2. Education Minimal knowledge of other

languages and writing systems

3. Home-grown Promote indigenous

infrastructures