Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches.

TLDR

The debate over whether skilled reading aloud requires a dual‑route architecture has been intensified by Seidenberg and McClelland’s challenge to the claim that such a structure is necessary. The authors describe the dual‑route cascaded model, a computational implementation of the dual‑route framework. Seidenberg and McClelland’s single‑route model accounts for only one of six key reading facts, whereas dual‑route models explain all six, supporting the dual‑route architecture as the viable model for skilled reading.

Abstract

It has often been argued that various facts about skilled reading aloud cannot be explained by any model unless that model possesses a dual-route architecture (lexical and nonlexical routes from print to speech). This broad claim has been challenged by Seidenberg and McClelland (1989, 1990). Their model has but a single route from print to speech, yet, they contend, it can account for major facts about reading that have hitherto been claimed to require a dual-route architecture. The authors identify 6 of these major facts about reading. The 1-route model proposed by Seidenberg and McClelland can account for the first of these but not the remaining 5. Because models with dual-route architectures can explain all 6 of these basic facts about reading, the authors suggest that this remains the viable architecture for any tenable model of skilled reading and learning to read. The dual-route cascaded model, a computational version of the dual-route model, is described