Offline segmentation and online language processing units

The influence of literacy

Dorina Veldhuis | Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Jeanne Kurvers | Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Although metalinguistic (‘offline’) awareness of words as linguistic units has been related to literacy, it is still uncertain whether literacy also affects the units of language that people process unconsciously (‘online’). In this contribution, we first discuss the characteristics of offline and online tasks, opening up the perspective that such tasks vary in nature along a continuum ranging from more offline to more online. Subsequently, we present a study employing three relatively more offline and two more online tasks which we conducted among 83 preliterate and 121 literate children at Dutch primary schools. The results of the more offline tasks reveal a significant influence of literacy on segmentation along word-boundaries, while the results from the relatively more online tasks are less clear-cut with respect to the way in which literacy affects language processing. Keywords: literacy; language acquisition; metalinguistic awareness; online and offline task; word-segmentation; language processing; developmental psycholinguistics; Dutch

Published online: 10 August 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.15.2.03vel

Cited by

Cited by 8 other publications

HAVRON, NAOMI & INBAL ARNON

2017. Minding the gaps: literacy enhances lexical segmentation in children learning to read. Journal of Child Language 44:6 ► pp. 1516 ff.

HAVRON, NAOMI & INBAL ARNON

2017. Reading between the words: The effect of literacy on second language lexical segmentation. Applied Psycholinguistics 38:1 ► pp. 127 ff.

Havron, Naomi, Limor Raviv & Inbal Arnon

2018. Literate and preliterate children show different learning patterns in an artificial language learning task. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science 2:1-2 ► pp. 21 ff.

Huete-Pérez, Daniel, Juan Haro, José Antonio Hinojosa & Pilar Ferré

2019. Does it matter if we approach or withdraw when reading? A comparison of fear-related words and anger-related words. Acta Psychologica 197 ► pp. 73 ff.

Olson, David R. & Keith Oatley

2014. The Quotation Theory of Writing. Written Communication 31:1 ► pp. 4 ff.

Teberosky, Ana, Angélica Sepúlveda & Otília Costa e Sousa

2020. In Reading-Writing Connections [Literacy Studies, 19], ► pp. 85 ff.

Ungureanu, Manuela L.

2015. In Romanian Studies in Philosophy of Science [Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 313], ► pp. 55 ff.

Ungureanu, Manuela L.

2020. Olson’s Domestication of Goody’s Literacy Hypothesis: (How) Can Philosophers of Language Help?. Interchange 51:1 ► pp. 41 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 november 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.