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Script Factors that Affect Literacy: Alphabetic vs. Logographic Languages

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Scripts and Literacy

Part of the book series: Neuropsychology and Cognition ((NPCO,volume 7))

Abstract

Literacy means the abilities to read and write. Because people learn to read and write simultaneously, the word literacy is usually used to refer to the ability to read alone. The ability to read itself has two components: decoding spelling into sound and decoding spelling into meaning. As Taylor (1987) pointed out recently, there are many factors that can affect our ability to decode spelling into sound and our ability to decode spelling into meaning. In the following, only those script factors that have been studied in our laboratory will be presented with an aim at elucidating their differential effects on the processing of English as an alphabetic language and the processing of Chinese as a logographic language. The first section dealt with the processes of decoding symbols into meanings; and the second, with the processes of decoding symbols into sounds.

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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Liu, IM. (1995). Script Factors that Affect Literacy: Alphabetic vs. Logographic Languages. In: Taylor, I., Olson, D.R. (eds) Scripts and Literacy. Neuropsychology and Cognition, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1162-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1162-1_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-4506-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-1162-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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