Advanced literacy skills are paramount in today’s knowledge-based economy. Failing to acquire full advanced literacy may significantly impair the quality of life of an individual. Research of reading comprehension mechanisms is of particular interest in adolescent samples as adolescence is the transitional period when reading acquisition typically has progressed past learning to decode, and further aims to construct meaning from complex texts. In componential reading models, vocabulary is considered to influence reading comprehension as part of or over the effects of language comprehension (e.g., SVR, DIME). A typical method of acquiring new vocabulary draws on presenting learners with novel words in context and having the learner infer the meaning of these words based on contextual cues. While some scholars argued that the contexts used to teach novel vocabulary should be highly constraining (Beck et al., 1983), others advocate for the use of moderately constraining contexts (Lampinen et al., 2019) suggesting that although highly constraining contexts are unambiguous they do not give the learner the opportunity to combine contextual and word specific information necessary to unravel the meaning of novel words. Here, we present an experimental study designed as the part of a large-scale project aimed at unraveling the cognitive, neurophysiological, and genetic factors associated with reading comprehension performance.This study was a pilot and it was aimed to (1) investigate individual differences in the ability to use contexts to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary items and (2) the extent to which this is related to variance in reading comprehension.

Acquiring the meaning of a new word can be achieved either by rote memorization or by extracting it from context. It was established that supportive contexts and the use of an active meaning-generation task may lead to robust word learning (Mestres-Misse et al., 2007). Furthermore, it was reported that rapid word learning is modulated by contextual constraint and reveals a rapid mental process that is sensitive to novel word usage (Borovsky et al., 2010). However, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms involved in word learning. Neurophysiological studies demonstrated that in a strongly constraining context, the N400 effect is elicited, that is higher amplitudes to targets preceded by pseudoword primes but only if they were presented in a useful - constraining - context.

In our pilot study, we investigate novel words acquisition during reading modulated by the context informativeness in adolescents with different reading comprehension abilities. Specifically, we constructed an experimental paradigm and presented participants with the blocks of sentences containing a novel word (pseudoword) embedded in the context of varying informativeness, that is with no (1), little (2), or sufficient (3) amount of lexical clues to the meaning of the novel word. First, we expect the ability to infer the meaning of novel words from the context to be positively and strongly correlated to the performance on reading comprehension tasks in adolescents after controlling for vocabulary skills. Second, we expect attention to the lexical clues (measured as visual fixations) to be an important predictor of efficiency in word-meaning unraveling. Finally, we analyze EEG data to establish whether the N400 effect is found when novel words are presented in highly constraining contexts (Frishkoff et al., 2010). 

Participants: The sample consisted of participants (n=40) aged from 13 to 17 years. All participants attended regular school programs and had normal or corrected to normal vision. Prior to study, the informed consents were obtained from both children and their legally authorized representatives. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Sirius University of Science and Technology, Russia. Materials and procedure: During the experiment we collected (1) behavioral data on the accuracy and reaction time for each experimental trial (2) data on eye movements with the use of an Eyelink 1000 Plus eye-tracker, (3) electrophysiological signal (EEG) from 128 electrodes with the use of an ActiCHamp system (Brain Products GmbH). The materials for this study consisted of 360 stimuli which were grouped into two sets. The first set consisted of 40 blocks of sentences (3 sentences *3 conditions; overall 120 sentences). The first sentence was a non-constraint sentence. The second was a low-constraint sentence. The third was a high-constraint sentence. The second set resembled the structure of the first one. Yet, all the 40 blocks consisted of non-constraint sentences. This was a condition aimed at eliminating the repetition effect. Both sets contained a pseudoword as a target. This is an example of the stimuli in the first set: non-constraining condition: The boy saw an apetav. low-constraining condition: The girl bought an apetav. high-constraining condition: The child chose a fixed apetav. This is an example of the stimuli in the second set: non-constraining condition: The man saw a rizon. non-constraining condition: The student talked about a rizon. non-constraining condition: The friend forgot about a rizon. Blocks were presented in a random order. After each sentence, participants were presented with three pictures (sequentially) and were asked whether each picture matched the meaning of the target word. The experiment lasted about 60 minutes. To minimize the influence of word-specific factors we exposed participants to novel nouns (pseudowords) with the intended meanings of highly familiar concrete concepts (e.g., “apetav'” as a synonym for “candle”). Data will be processed with the following software: PsychoPy v3.0, IBM SPSS statistics 24, and R Programming Environment. Regression analysis is planned to be used to estimate the effect of constraint conditions on oculomotor and EEG activity.

The current study is focused on the role of contextual constraint on novel word acquisition in adolescents. After the pilot study stage, the data will be collected on a large sample of “poor” and “excellent” readers. The pilot data will be analyzed and interpreted by June 2022, and preliminary findings will be presented at the conference. We hypothesize that different conditions of contextual constraint will influence the process of extracting understanding from the context. Changes in perception of sentences with different levels of contextual constraint are thought to be reflected in eye movements and EEG data. Thus, we expect changes in the number and duration of fixations (both the first fixations and the average duration of all fixations) on the words and images when the informativeness of the context is low. In addition, it has been demonstrated in earlier studies that pupil diameter is sensitive to cognitive load, so we would expect a variation of this parameter for different constraint conditions. EEG data will be also analyzed and presented in the report. We expect to see a modulation of the N400 and P600 components under contextual restriction. In particular, there will be a difference between the first and the last presentation of the same word in cases of gradual contextual restriction. No differences in cases without restriction are expected. Such changes are associated with semantic processing in earlier studies, and it is probable that changes in the contextual constraint will be reflected in our study as well (Frishkoff et al., 2010).

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & McCaslin, E. S. (1983). Vocabulary development: All contexts are not created equal. The Elementary School Journal, 83(3), 177-181. Borovsky, A., Kutas, M., & Elman, J. (2010). Learning to use words: Event-related potentials index single-shot contextual word learning. Cognition, 116(2), 289–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.05.004 Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271 Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700104 Lampinen, J. M., & Faries, J. M. (2019, May). Levels of semantic constraint and learning novel words. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 531-536). Routledge. Landi, N., & Ryherd, K. (2017). Understanding specific reading comprehension deficit: A review. Language and Linguistics Compass, 11(2), e12234. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12234 Mestres-Misse, A., Rodriguez-Fornells, A., & Munte, T. F. (2007). Watching the Brain during Meaning Acquisition. Cerebral Cortex, 17(8), 1858–1866. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhl094 Oakhill, J. V., Cain, K., & Bryant, P. E. (2003). The dissociation of word reading and text comprehension: Evidence from component skills. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18(4), 443–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960344000008 Spencer, M., & Wagner, R. K. (2018). The Comprehension Problems of Children With Poor Reading Comprehension Despite Adequate Decoding: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, 88(3), 366–400. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654317749187 Frishkoff GA, Perfetti CA, Collins-Thompson K. Lexical quality in the brain: ERP evidence for robust word learning from context. Dev Neuropsychol. 2010;35(4):376-403. doi: 10.1080/87565641.2010.480915.