Jackie Masterson | University College London (original) (raw)
Papers by Jackie Masterson
Brain and Language, 2006
The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tes... more The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tested the hypothesis put forward in (some) previous studies that in Alzheimer's dementia the production of verbs, that is required in action naming, is better preserved than the production of nouns, that is required in object naming. The possible reason for the dissociation is that verbs are supported predominantly by frontal brain structures that may remain relatively better preserved in early Alzheimer's disease. Objects, on the other hand, are supported by temporal lobe structures that are aVected early in the disease. An alternative hypothesis, which is supported by other studies, is that action naming is more impaired than object naming due to verbs being semantically more complex than nouns. In order to test these contrasting hypotheses, the present study used more stringent methodology than previous studies. We used a larger set of stimuli with carefully matched object and action items and we collected not only accuracy data but also naming latencies, a measure that is sensitive to even mild lexical retrieval problems. We compared the performance of 19 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease with that of 19 healthy age matched participants. We found that both the patients and the comparison group responded faster and made fewer errors on the object pictures than the action pictures. A qualitative analysis of the naming errors indicated that object and action naming pose diVerent demands for the language system. The results overall suggest that the patients' performance is an exaggeration of the pattern present in the comparison participants.
Neuropsychological rehabilitation, Jan 14, 2018
An intervention study was carried out with two nine-year-old Greek-speaking dyslexic children. Bo... more An intervention study was carried out with two nine-year-old Greek-speaking dyslexic children. Both children were slow in reading single words and text and had difficulty in spelling irregularly spelled words. One child was also poor in non-word reading. Intervention focused on spelling in a whole-word training using a flashcard technique that had previously been found to be effective with English-speaking children. Post-intervention assessments conducted immediately at the end of the intervention, one month later and then five months later showed a significant improvement in spelling of treated words that was sustained over time. In addition, both children showed generalisation of improvement to untrained words and an increase in scores in a standardised spelling assessment. The findings support the effectiveness of theoretically based targeted intervention for literacy difficulties.
International journal of speech-language pathology, Jan 31, 2017
The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-fi... more The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-finding difficulties (WFDs). Twenty children age 6-8 years with WFDs confirmed by a discrepancy between comprehension and production on the Test of Word Finding-2, were randomly assigned to intervention (n = 11) and waiting control (n = 9) groups. The intervention group had six sessions of intervention which used word-webs and targeted children's meta-cognitive awareness and word-retrieval. On the treated experimental set (n = 25 items) the intervention group gained on average four times as many items as the waiting control group (d = 2.30). There were also gains on personally chosen items for the intervention group. There was little change on untreated items for either group. The study is the first randomised control trial to demonstrate an effect of word-finding therapy with children with language difficulties in mainstream school. The improvement in word-finding for treated items wa...
Brain Lang 98 332 340, Sep 1, 2006
The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tes... more The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tested the hypothesis put forward in (some) previous studies that in Alzheimer's dementia the production of verbs, that is required in action naming, is better preserved than the production of nouns, that is required in object naming. The possible reason for the dissociation is that verbs are supported predominantly by frontal brain structures that may remain relatively better preserved in early Alzheimer's disease. Objects, on the other hand, are supported by temporal lobe structures that are aVected early in the disease. An alternative hypothesis, which is supported by other studies, is that action naming is more impaired than object naming due to verbs being semantically more complex than nouns. In order to test these contrasting hypotheses, the present study used more stringent methodology than previous studies. We used a larger set of stimuli with carefully matched object and action items and we collected not only accuracy data but also naming latencies, a measure that is sensitive to even mild lexical retrieval problems. We compared the performance of 19 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease with that of 19 healthy age matched participants. We found that both the patients and the comparison group responded faster and made fewer errors on the object pictures than the action pictures. A qualitative analysis of the naming errors indicated that object and action naming pose diVerent demands for the language system. The results overall suggest that the patients' performance is an exaggeration of the pattern present in the comparison participants.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 01690969408402108, Dec 13, 2007
... reading words based on context or on features of the word such as length or salient ... by cl... more ... reading words based on context or on features of the word such as length or salient ... by close orthographic neighbours (this should be predicted by models with local representations of words ... The 20 children who comprised Group A had a mean reading age, as measured by the ...
Journal of experimental child psychology, Jan 11, 2016
We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-ye... more We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-year-old children read words both in isolation and in context. Lexical knowledge was assessed using general and item-specific tasks. General semantic knowledge was measured using standardized tasks in which children defined words and made judgments about the relationships between words. Item-specific knowledge of to-be-read words was assessed using auditory lexical decision (lexical phonology) and definitions (semantic) tasks. Regressions and mixed-effects models indicated a close relationship between semantic knowledge (but not lexical phonology) and both regular and exception word reading. Thus, during the early stages of learning to read, semantic knowledge may support word reading irrespective of regularity. Contextual support particularly benefitted reading of exception words. We found evidence that lexical-semantic knowledge and context make separable contributions to word reading.
... UCL classification: UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Scienc... more ... UCL classification: UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences >Psychology and Language Sciences (Division of) > Linguistics UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Psychology and Language Sciences (Division ...
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 02724980143000460, Sep 22, 2010
Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants&... more Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants' pronunciation latencies were faster for low-frequency irregular words when named under a concurrent high digit memory load than when named under a low load. The effects reported by Paap and Noel haveproved difficult to replicate in subsequent studies. The present research suggests that individual differences in word recognition skill relate to who will or will not show these effects. In two experiments, participants were allocated to skill groups on the basis of latency in tasks tapping lexical and sub-lexical reading processes. In both studies, only one group (the "intermediate skilled"), showed evidence of such effects. A combined analysis of the data from Experiments 1 and 2 was carried out. This confirmed and extended the analyses of the individual experiments. The results are discussed in relation to contemporary models of word recognition.
British Journal of Educational Psychology, Mar 1, 1998
Reading and Writing an Interdisciplinary Journal, Jan 5, 2002
A training study was conducted to investigate the relationship between phoneme segmentation abili... more A training study was conducted to investigate the relationship between phoneme segmentation ability and the development of orthographic representations. Five-year-old children with varying degrees of phoneme segmentation ability were taught to read ten new words by repeated presentation of the words on flashcards. It was found that those children who were most well equipped to perform phoneme segmentation tasks acquired this new reading vocabulary significantly faster than those who were less phonemically aware. A series of post-tests was implemented to discover the nature of the internal orthographic representations which the children had created for the words learned. The results of these post-tests demonstrated that the children who were most phonemically aware had also internalised the most detailed orthographic representations, despite needing fewer learning trials. Salient letters for orthographic storage were predictable from the children's phoneme segmentation abilities. This paper provides strong support for the thesis that phonemic awareness is related to orthographic storage as well as alphabetic reading techniques.
TESL Canada Journal, 1985
This article reports a case of a native speaker of Spanish who has severe reading and spelling di... more This article reports a case of a native speaker of Spanish who has severe reading and spelling difficulties in English. These difficulties resemble those found in surface dyslexia. It is argued that he also has the same difficulties in Spanish, but the regular spelling system of Spanish prevented his difficulties from becoming apparent. We consider the possibility that the writing system of a speaker's L1can strongly influence the way he/she habitually handles words both in the Ll and in an L2, and the implications of this view for teaching English as a second language are discussed.
Quart J Exp Psych a Hum Exp P, 1991
Patterson and Morton (1985) proposed a model for the skilled reading of words and non-words that ... more Patterson and Morton (1985) proposed a model for the skilled reading of words and non-words that accommodates two non-lexical routines. One is the grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence system which utilizes the regularity of letter to sound correspondences for single letters and digraphs. The other is a system of “bodies”—the vowel and terminal letters of a monomorphemic, monosyllabic word. The idea of the body segment, as Patterson and Morton use it, is to capture consistency effects in reading aloud—that is, the fact that the spelling-sound pattern of words with similar written endings to the target affects the speed and accuracy of its reading. In this study consistency and regularity are examined as separate factors in children's reading, by devising stimuli in accordance with the different types of three-letter ending that are proposed within the body sub-system. A group of 87 children aged seven to nine (reading age range: 6;6 to 13;7) was sub-divided according to reading ability and given words and non-words to read aloud. In all the children, performance was affected by body type for both words and non-words, but the better readers were most affected. The implications of these results for a radical distributed model of reading acquisition (Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989) are considered.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology a Human Experimental Psychology, 1999
Sigh t Vocab u lary: Ev id en ce from 6-an d 7-ye ar-old s
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0266736970130308, Oct 19, 2007
ABSTRACT The revised Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, the British Ability Scales (BAS) single‐w... more ABSTRACT The revised Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, the British Ability Scales (BAS) single‐word reading test, the Hertfordshire sentence reading test and the NFER‐Nelson Group Reading Test 6‐12 (GRT 6‐12), were given to infant and junior children in a primary school. The results were analysed as infant and junior data, then re‐analysed according to reading ability. For the latter analysis two ability groups were formed, those scoring a reading age under 9 on the Neale and those scoring over 9. In practical terms it was considered important to discuss the results in terms of low and high reading ages as well as in terms of infant and junior data. Significantly higher scores were obtained on the BAS, Hertfordshire and GRT 6‐12 tests than on the Neale for the infant children in analysis 1 and for the lower ability group in analysis 2. However, children in the higher ability group in analysis 2 obtained equivalent scores on the BAS and the Neale. In addition to the quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis of the items in the tests was carried out. It is argued that the discrepancies observed in the test scores are sufficiently large to warrant re‐standardisation of particular tests.
Brain and Language, 2006
The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tes... more The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tested the hypothesis put forward in (some) previous studies that in Alzheimer's dementia the production of verbs, that is required in action naming, is better preserved than the production of nouns, that is required in object naming. The possible reason for the dissociation is that verbs are supported predominantly by frontal brain structures that may remain relatively better preserved in early Alzheimer's disease. Objects, on the other hand, are supported by temporal lobe structures that are aVected early in the disease. An alternative hypothesis, which is supported by other studies, is that action naming is more impaired than object naming due to verbs being semantically more complex than nouns. In order to test these contrasting hypotheses, the present study used more stringent methodology than previous studies. We used a larger set of stimuli with carefully matched object and action items and we collected not only accuracy data but also naming latencies, a measure that is sensitive to even mild lexical retrieval problems. We compared the performance of 19 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease with that of 19 healthy age matched participants. We found that both the patients and the comparison group responded faster and made fewer errors on the object pictures than the action pictures. A qualitative analysis of the naming errors indicated that object and action naming pose diVerent demands for the language system. The results overall suggest that the patients' performance is an exaggeration of the pattern present in the comparison participants.
Neuropsychological rehabilitation, Jan 14, 2018
An intervention study was carried out with two nine-year-old Greek-speaking dyslexic children. Bo... more An intervention study was carried out with two nine-year-old Greek-speaking dyslexic children. Both children were slow in reading single words and text and had difficulty in spelling irregularly spelled words. One child was also poor in non-word reading. Intervention focused on spelling in a whole-word training using a flashcard technique that had previously been found to be effective with English-speaking children. Post-intervention assessments conducted immediately at the end of the intervention, one month later and then five months later showed a significant improvement in spelling of treated words that was sustained over time. In addition, both children showed generalisation of improvement to untrained words and an increase in scores in a standardised spelling assessment. The findings support the effectiveness of theoretically based targeted intervention for literacy difficulties.
International journal of speech-language pathology, Jan 31, 2017
The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-fi... more The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-finding difficulties (WFDs). Twenty children age 6-8 years with WFDs confirmed by a discrepancy between comprehension and production on the Test of Word Finding-2, were randomly assigned to intervention (n = 11) and waiting control (n = 9) groups. The intervention group had six sessions of intervention which used word-webs and targeted children's meta-cognitive awareness and word-retrieval. On the treated experimental set (n = 25 items) the intervention group gained on average four times as many items as the waiting control group (d = 2.30). There were also gains on personally chosen items for the intervention group. There was little change on untreated items for either group. The study is the first randomised control trial to demonstrate an effect of word-finding therapy with children with language difficulties in mainstream school. The improvement in word-finding for treated items wa...
Brain Lang 98 332 340, Sep 1, 2006
The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tes... more The present study compared object and action naming in patients with Alzheimer's dementia. We tested the hypothesis put forward in (some) previous studies that in Alzheimer's dementia the production of verbs, that is required in action naming, is better preserved than the production of nouns, that is required in object naming. The possible reason for the dissociation is that verbs are supported predominantly by frontal brain structures that may remain relatively better preserved in early Alzheimer's disease. Objects, on the other hand, are supported by temporal lobe structures that are aVected early in the disease. An alternative hypothesis, which is supported by other studies, is that action naming is more impaired than object naming due to verbs being semantically more complex than nouns. In order to test these contrasting hypotheses, the present study used more stringent methodology than previous studies. We used a larger set of stimuli with carefully matched object and action items and we collected not only accuracy data but also naming latencies, a measure that is sensitive to even mild lexical retrieval problems. We compared the performance of 19 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease with that of 19 healthy age matched participants. We found that both the patients and the comparison group responded faster and made fewer errors on the object pictures than the action pictures. A qualitative analysis of the naming errors indicated that object and action naming pose diVerent demands for the language system. The results overall suggest that the patients' performance is an exaggeration of the pattern present in the comparison participants.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 01690969408402108, Dec 13, 2007
... reading words based on context or on features of the word such as length or salient ... by cl... more ... reading words based on context or on features of the word such as length or salient ... by close orthographic neighbours (this should be predicted by models with local representations of words ... The 20 children who comprised Group A had a mean reading age, as measured by the ...
Journal of experimental child psychology, Jan 11, 2016
We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-ye... more We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-year-old children read words both in isolation and in context. Lexical knowledge was assessed using general and item-specific tasks. General semantic knowledge was measured using standardized tasks in which children defined words and made judgments about the relationships between words. Item-specific knowledge of to-be-read words was assessed using auditory lexical decision (lexical phonology) and definitions (semantic) tasks. Regressions and mixed-effects models indicated a close relationship between semantic knowledge (but not lexical phonology) and both regular and exception word reading. Thus, during the early stages of learning to read, semantic knowledge may support word reading irrespective of regularity. Contextual support particularly benefitted reading of exception words. We found evidence that lexical-semantic knowledge and context make separable contributions to word reading.
... UCL classification: UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Scienc... more ... UCL classification: UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences >Psychology and Language Sciences (Division of) > Linguistics UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Psychology and Language Sciences (Division ...
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 02724980143000460, Sep 22, 2010
Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants&... more Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants' pronunciation latencies were faster for low-frequency irregular words when named under a concurrent high digit memory load than when named under a low load. The effects reported by Paap and Noel haveproved difficult to replicate in subsequent studies. The present research suggests that individual differences in word recognition skill relate to who will or will not show these effects. In two experiments, participants were allocated to skill groups on the basis of latency in tasks tapping lexical and sub-lexical reading processes. In both studies, only one group (the "intermediate skilled"), showed evidence of such effects. A combined analysis of the data from Experiments 1 and 2 was carried out. This confirmed and extended the analyses of the individual experiments. The results are discussed in relation to contemporary models of word recognition.
British Journal of Educational Psychology, Mar 1, 1998
Reading and Writing an Interdisciplinary Journal, Jan 5, 2002
A training study was conducted to investigate the relationship between phoneme segmentation abili... more A training study was conducted to investigate the relationship between phoneme segmentation ability and the development of orthographic representations. Five-year-old children with varying degrees of phoneme segmentation ability were taught to read ten new words by repeated presentation of the words on flashcards. It was found that those children who were most well equipped to perform phoneme segmentation tasks acquired this new reading vocabulary significantly faster than those who were less phonemically aware. A series of post-tests was implemented to discover the nature of the internal orthographic representations which the children had created for the words learned. The results of these post-tests demonstrated that the children who were most phonemically aware had also internalised the most detailed orthographic representations, despite needing fewer learning trials. Salient letters for orthographic storage were predictable from the children's phoneme segmentation abilities. This paper provides strong support for the thesis that phonemic awareness is related to orthographic storage as well as alphabetic reading techniques.
TESL Canada Journal, 1985
This article reports a case of a native speaker of Spanish who has severe reading and spelling di... more This article reports a case of a native speaker of Spanish who has severe reading and spelling difficulties in English. These difficulties resemble those found in surface dyslexia. It is argued that he also has the same difficulties in Spanish, but the regular spelling system of Spanish prevented his difficulties from becoming apparent. We consider the possibility that the writing system of a speaker's L1can strongly influence the way he/she habitually handles words both in the Ll and in an L2, and the implications of this view for teaching English as a second language are discussed.
Quart J Exp Psych a Hum Exp P, 1991
Patterson and Morton (1985) proposed a model for the skilled reading of words and non-words that ... more Patterson and Morton (1985) proposed a model for the skilled reading of words and non-words that accommodates two non-lexical routines. One is the grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence system which utilizes the regularity of letter to sound correspondences for single letters and digraphs. The other is a system of “bodies”—the vowel and terminal letters of a monomorphemic, monosyllabic word. The idea of the body segment, as Patterson and Morton use it, is to capture consistency effects in reading aloud—that is, the fact that the spelling-sound pattern of words with similar written endings to the target affects the speed and accuracy of its reading. In this study consistency and regularity are examined as separate factors in children's reading, by devising stimuli in accordance with the different types of three-letter ending that are proposed within the body sub-system. A group of 87 children aged seven to nine (reading age range: 6;6 to 13;7) was sub-divided according to reading ability and given words and non-words to read aloud. In all the children, performance was affected by body type for both words and non-words, but the better readers were most affected. The implications of these results for a radical distributed model of reading acquisition (Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989) are considered.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology a Human Experimental Psychology, 1999
Sigh t Vocab u lary: Ev id en ce from 6-an d 7-ye ar-old s
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0266736970130308, Oct 19, 2007
ABSTRACT The revised Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, the British Ability Scales (BAS) single‐w... more ABSTRACT The revised Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, the British Ability Scales (BAS) single‐word reading test, the Hertfordshire sentence reading test and the NFER‐Nelson Group Reading Test 6‐12 (GRT 6‐12), were given to infant and junior children in a primary school. The results were analysed as infant and junior data, then re‐analysed according to reading ability. For the latter analysis two ability groups were formed, those scoring a reading age under 9 on the Neale and those scoring over 9. In practical terms it was considered important to discuss the results in terms of low and high reading ages as well as in terms of infant and junior data. Significantly higher scores were obtained on the BAS, Hertfordshire and GRT 6‐12 tests than on the Neale for the infant children in analysis 1 and for the lower ability group in analysis 2. However, children in the higher ability group in analysis 2 obtained equivalent scores on the BAS and the Neale. In addition to the quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis of the items in the tests was carried out. It is argued that the discrepancies observed in the test scores are sufficiently large to warrant re‐standardisation of particular tests.