Large language models (LLMs) were trained to predict words without having explicit semantic word representations as humans do. Here we compared LLMs and humans in re-solving semantic ambiguities at the word/token level by ex-amining the case of segmenting overlapping ambiguous strings in Chinese sentence reading, where three characters “ABC” could be segmented in either “AB/C” or “A/BC” depending on the context. We showed that although LLMs performed worse than humans, they demonstrated a similar interaction effect between segmentation structure and word frequency order, suggesting that this effect observed in humans could be accounted for by statistical learning of word/token occurrence regularities without assuming an explicit semantic word representation. Nevertheless, across stimuli LLMs' responses were not correlated with any hu-man performance or eye movement measures, suggesting differences in the underlying processing mechanisms. Thus, it is essential to understand these differences through XAI methods to facilitate LLM adoption.

Research on second-language (L2) English literacy development in Chinese children with dyslexia is limited, but existing studies suggest a puzzling phenomenon: These children experience difficulties in reading both native (L1) Chinese and L2 English, despite the distinct cognitive processes involved in reading Chinese and English which suggest minimal transfer between the two writing systems. This paper aims to investigate the above phenomenon and examine the role of phonics skills in improving English word reading in dyslexic Chinese children in 2 studies. Study 1 found that letter-sound-decoding knowledge robustly and significantly predicted English word naming and reading fluency in Chinese dyslexic children. Study 2 revealed that phonics-based interventions is required to significantly improve English literacy skills. The accommodation-assimilation hypothesis explains cross-language transfer of reading difficulties in Chinese-English bilinguals: Dyslexic Chinese children assimilate English word-decoding processes using their native language; they can accommodate and improve English literacy by learning letter-sound decoding skills.