BIO

My name is Cristina Kopels and I am a sophomore from Boca Raton, Florida. My major is Special Education teaching and I have applied to the combined BS/MS program for the fall of 2022 here at Florida State. My research interests include psychology, education, and learning disabilities, and this project expertly combined all three which attracted me to it. Outside of academic pursuits, I enjoy reading, cooking, swimming, and finding new places around Tallahassee.

The Relationship Between Set for Variability and Nonword Reading in Adults

Abstract

The spelling of an English word does not necessarily match how it is pronounced. Set for Variability (SFV) is the ability to recognize a word from its mispronounced form and correctly pronounce it aloud. In this study, we measure SFV by testing how accurately a person can identify words from their decoded versus orthographically mismatched pronunciations. A decoded pronunciation results from sounding out a word letter by letter. Take the word “tongue.” Pronouncing the word in its decoded form would sound like “ton-goo” when the word is actually pronounced “tung.” In contrast, orthographically mismatched pronunciations replace one or more sounds in the real pronunciation with sounds not typically associated with the real word’s spelling. Using “tongue” again, the mismatched pronunciation would be “tin-goy.” SFV has explained “significant and unique variance in developmental word and nonword reading skill” in previous studies of elementary school children (Kearns et al., 2016; Steacy et al., 2019a; Tunmer & Chapman, 2012). Non-words are strings of sounds that sound like a word but are not recognized as real by native English speakers (e.g., Tasflime). Nonword reading in adults is a measure of their decoding ability. Determining whether performance on the decoded or mismatched SFV pronunciation correlates more strongly with non-word reading can differentiate what determines a successful SFV task performance. We hypothesize that high performance on identifying decoded mispronunciations in the SFV will be more highly correlated with high non-word reading performance compared to SFV performance on the mismatched mispronunciations.

Keywords: Reading, Set for Variability, Nonwords