1. Towards a Theory of Automatic
Information Processing in reading

2. Some notions
• The journey that words take from their written
form to ther enentual activation of their
meaning involves lots of stages of information
processing.
• The journey takes a very short time for fluent
readers.
• The acquisition of reading skills takes years.

3. Skills and attention
• The excution of a complex skill necesitaes a
coordination of many other many compenent
processes within a very short of time.
• The skill will not be excuted successfully if one
of the component process requires attention.
• If the compents and their coordinations can
be processed automatically, the skill can be
successfully performed.

4. Purpose
• Present a model of reading process which
describes the main stages invoved in
transforming written pattern into meanings
and relates the attention mechanism in
processing at each of these stages.
• Test this model against some experimental
findings that claims that the role of attention
changes during advanced states of perceptual
and associative learning.

5. Main Sections of the Article
I. A brief summary of the current views of the
attention mechanism in information
processing.
II. Set forth a theory of automacity in reading
and evaluate against some data.
III. Discuss factors which may influence the
development of automacity.
IV. Discuss some implications of the model for
research in reading instruction.

6. Attention Mechanism in Information
processing
• The properties of attention according to the
researches in the recent past.
• Selectivity and capacity limitation
• Posner and Boies add another component of
attention which is alterness ( this property has
been investigated in vigilance tasks)
• Limited capacity has generated the most
theoretical controversy.

7. Previous Theories
• Dichotic listening experiments: The subject
select one ear at a time of processing
massages.

8. The effects of attentional activation
on information processing
There are three effects:
 It can assist in the construction of a new code. ( in figure 1,
successive activation of features f7 and f8 is necessary to
synthesize letter code L5.
 Activation of a code prior to the presentation of its
corresponding stimulus is assumed to increase the rate of
processing when that stimuls is presented.
 Activation of a code can arouse other codes to which it has
been associated.

9. Example
• Suppose a child is learning to discriminate the letters t and h.
in this case:
• The length of the vertical line is not relevant to the
discrimination of the two letters.
• Instead, he must notice the short horizontal cross of t and the
concave loop in the h.
• These are the distinctive features of these letters when
considered against each other.
• One feature which seems irrelevant for all letters is thickness
of line.
• Letters share features in common.

10. • The rate of learning to select the appropriate
bfeatures of a pattern may be quite slow the
first time a child is given letters to
discriminate.

11. The second stage of perceptual
learning
• During this stage, the subject must a letter
code from the relevant features, a process
that needs attention.
• First, the subject scans, rapidly, the idividual
feature detectors and strats to form high-
order unit.
• If the pattern has too many features,
organistaion into a unit code might not be
manageable.