What Do Artificial Orthography Learning Tasks Actually Measure? Correlations Within and Across Tasks

Xenia Schmalz; Gerd Schulte-Körne; Elisabetta de Simone; Kristina Moll

doi:10.5334/joc.144

What Do Artificial Orthography Learning Tasks Actually Measure? Correlations Within and Across Tasks

J Cogn. 2021 Jan 13;4(1):7. doi: 10.5334/joc.144.

Authors

Xenia Schmalz¹, Gerd Schulte-Körne¹, Elisabetta de Simone¹, Kristina Moll¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany.

PMID: 33511326
PMCID: PMC7805385
DOI: 10.5334/joc.144

Abstract

Artificial Orthography Learning (AOL) may act as a possible candidate to model the learning of print-to-speech correspondences. In order to serve as an adequate task, however, we need to establish whether AOL can be reliably measured. In the current study, we report the correlations between the learning of two different artificial orthographies by the same 55 participants. We also explore the correlation between AOL skill and other participant-level variables, namely Paired Associate Learning (PAL) performance, word and nonword reading ability, and age. We find high correlations between learning of two different artificial orthographies. Correlations with reading fluency and PAL are low. These results leave questions about the link between reading acquisition and AOL. At the same time, they show that AOL ability can be reliably measured and justify its use for future studies.

Keywords: Artificial Orthography Learning; Learning; Paired Associate Learning; reading; test-retest correlation.