Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

To become a proficient reader, children have to learnmappings between print, sound and meaning. There isdebate over whether reading instruction should focus on therelations between print and sound, as in phonics, or on therelationship between print and meaning, as in sight wordreading. In a study where participants learned a novelartificial orthography, Taylor, Davis and Rastle (2017)compared print to sound focused or print to meaningfocused reading training, demonstrating that sound trainingwas superior for learning to read. However, a benefit fromsound focused training is likely dependent on prioracquisition of effective sound to meaning relations of words.To explore this issue, we developed a connectionist modelof reading. We exposed the model to a sound or a meaningfocused training, but varied the model’s pre-acquired orallanguage skills. The simulation results showed thatproficiency in oral language is a determinant of theadvantage of print to sound focused reading training,suggesting that reading training should address both orallanguage skills and print to sound mappings.