Pronunciation of low-frequency irregular words in estimating premorbid intelligence

Leong Che Kan

Yamada Jun

Contemporary issues of brain, communication and education in psychology : the science of mind

Recently, McGurn et al. (2004) confirmed that the pronunciation of the low frequency and irregular words in the National Adult Reading Test (NART) is preserved in adult patients with dementia and NART provides a good estimate of premorbid intelligence of these patients. We attempted to answer these intriguing questions by examining the phonological structure of NART words, particularly the optimality of the demisyllables constituting these words. Following Clement (1990), we found the initial and final demisyllables of NART words are near optimal in sonority dispersion as compared with some regularly spelled counterparts. The near optimality of NART words may facilitate their retrieval and become part of "crystallized intelligence". We further invoked the concept of word reading as paired-associate learning to explain the unique visual-verbal contribution to irregular word reading. We speculated that the pronunciation of NART-like low frequency Japanese kanji words or Chinese characters with optimal speech forms may also be preserved in Japanese or Chinese dementia patients and may correlate with premorbid intelligence.

National Adult Reading Test (NART)

optimality of demisyllables

phonological structure of NART words

premorbid intelligence in dementia

word reading as paired-associate learning

Language [ 800 ]

Psychology [ 140 ]

eng

Union Press

Copyright (c) 2008 Kazuhito Yoshizaki and others

[ISBN] 9784946428388

[NCID] BA89758039