Beyond single syllables: large-scale modeling of reading aloud with the Connectionist Dual Process (CDP++) model.
Most words in English have more than one syllable, yet the most influential computational models of reading aloud are restricted to processing monosyllabic words. Here, we present CDP++, a new version of the Connectionist Dual Process model (Perry, Ziegler, & Zorzi, 2007). CDP++ is able to simulate the reading aloud of mono- and disyllabic words and nonwords, and learns to assign stress in exactly the same way as it learns to associate graphemes with phonemes. CDP++ is able to simulate the monosyllabic benchmark effects its predecessor could, and therefore shows full backwards compatibility. CDP++ also accounts for a number of novel effects specific to disyllabic words, including the effects of stress regularity and syllable number. In terms of database performance, CDP++ accounts for over 49% of the reaction time variance on items selected from the English Lexicon Project, a very large database of several thousand of words. With its lexicon of over 32,000 words, CDP++ is therefore a notable example of the successful scaling-up of a connectionist model to a size that more realistically approximates the human lexical system.
Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. ConradPerry@gmail.com
Conrad
C
Perry
Johannes C
JC
Ziegler
Marco
M
Zorzi
D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D013060:Speech; D014825:Vocabulary