Staff Profiles

Modules taught

U24172. Understanding Developmental Disorders.

U24182. Topics in Developmental Psychology.

P24119. Cognitive and Social Aspects of Development.

Supervision

MSc disseration supervision

I supervise several projects related to language processing.

PhD supervision

• 2nd supervisor PhD student, Yurena Hernández Gálvez (Universidad de La Laguna, Spain).
• 3rd supervisor PhD student, Lynsey O'Rourke.
• 3rd supervisor PhD student, Samuel Bond.

Olivia's research interests concern language processing in general and the writing production process in particular. In her investigation, she addresses the cognitive processes underlying typical and atypical spelling and handwriting in both children and adults. She is also interested in the differences between handwriting and typewriting from a cognitive and developmental perspective. Her research is mainly based on the analysis of online measures of the written response, such as written latencies, writing durations, pen pressure and in-air pen duration and trajectory.

Research group membership

• Writing Research Group

Research grants and awards

• SRUK/CERU Travel Award, to attend the 21st Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (Tenerife, Spain). Amount: £400.
• Health & Life Sciences Jump Start Award, awarded by Oxford Brookes University to organise a public engagement event. Amount: £300.
• International Collaborative Research & Travel Award, awarded by Oxford Brookes University, 2018 (£1,464).
• Seal of Excellence awarded by the European Commission for the project entitled “Central and peripheral processes in handwriting and keyboarding throughout typical and atypical development: The cases of Developmental Dyslexia and Developmental Coordination Disorder”, 2017.
• Santander Research Scholarship Scheme, awarded by Oxford Brookes University, 2016 (£730).
• Outstanding Doctorate Award 2013/2014, awarded by the University of La Laguna, 2015.
• Research Grant, “Doctor Manuel Morales Foundation”, 2013 (€10,000).
• Research award for pre-doctoral students, awarded by the Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna, for the work “El rol de las unidades subléxicas en la producción escrita: ¿Son las palabras meras cadenas de grafemas?” (“The role of sublexic units in writing production: Are words mere chains of graphemes?”), 2008 (€300).

Research projects

• Comparing hand- and typewriting across development: Implications for children with and without developmental dyslexia.
• Cognitive processes involved during word writing in English.
• Working memory processes during handwriting and spelling.
• Serial order in spelling.

Journal articles

• O'Rourke L, Connelly V, Barnett, AL, Afonso O, 'Use of spellcheck in text production by college students with dyslexia'
  Journal of Writing Research 12 (1) (2020) pp.35-62
  ISSN: 2030-1006
  Abstract

  It is widely assumed that by identifying spelling errors and suggesting replacement words, spellcheck allows writers to revise spelling errors even if they do not have the necessary spelling knowledge. However, there have been no studies evaluating the efficacy of modern spellcheck tools for students with spelling difficulties, such as dyslexia. In fact, the very limited and dated research into use of spellcheck by writers with dyslexia indicated that, even when using spellcheck to revise spelling errors, this group left many misspellings in their texts. The current study is the first to investigate whether a modern spellcheck program allows college students with dyslexia to produce texts that are as free from misspellings as texts by their peers, and whether this affects the quality of the text in other ways.
  

  College students with dyslexia (n=18) and a control group of peers (n=18) wrote two short essays using Microsoft Word, one with spellcheck active and one without spellcheck active. Spelling accuracy and overall quality of the texts were measured. Without spellcheck, students with dyslexia made more misspellings than the control group, however, with spellcheck active students from both groups left almost zero misspelled words in their texts. Text quality was not affected. Results demonstrate that spellcheck helps college students with dyslexia to overcome the limitations that poor spelling knowledge imposes. Importantly, results indicate that spellcheck does not lead to improvements in text beyond spelling accuracy, or lead to poorer quality texts, indicating that it is suitable for use in exam conditions.

  Website 
• Suarez-Coalla P, Afonso, O, Martinez-Garcia C, Cuetos F, 'Dynamics of sentence handwriting in dyslexia: the impact of frequency and consistency'
  Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2020)
  ISSN: 1664-1078
  Abstract

  Previous literature has indicated that linguistic and motor processes influence each other during written sentence production, and that the scope of this influence varies according to spelling ability or cognitive resources available. This study investigated how the spelling deficits associated with dyslexia affect the dynamics of the interaction between central and peripheral processes and the level of anticipation that can be observed in word spelling in the context of a sentence to dictation task. Children 9-12 year-olds with and without dyslexia wrote sentences to dictation in which the lexical frequency and phonology-to-orthography consistency of the last word (target) were manipulated. Analyses of kinematic measures (writing durations, in-air pen duration, and peaks of speed) revealed that children with dyslexia showed lexical frequency effects evident in within-word pauses (in-air pen) in the article and noun production. In addition, both children with and without dyslexia showed a phonology-to-orthography consistency effect in the pause before the target word. This effect tended to continue affecting the execution of the syllable prior to the inconsistency only in the group with dyslexia. Results support the influence of linguistic processes on motor execution. In addition, the study provides evidence of the impact of spelling deficits on the dynamics of handwriting in children with dyslexia.
  

  Website 
• Afonso O, Suárez-Coalla P, Cuetos F, 'Writing impairments in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia'
  Journal of Learning Disabilities 53 (2) (2020) pp.109-119
  ISSN: 0022-2194 eISSN: 1538-4780
  Abstract This study investigated which components of the writing production process are impaired in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia (DD) aged 8-12 years. Children with and without dyslexia (n = 60) were assessed in their use of the lexical and the sublexical routes of spelling as well as the orthographic working memory system by manipulating lexical frequency, phonology-to-orthography (P-O) consistency and word length in a copying task and a spelling-to-dictation task. Results revealed that children with dyslexia produced longer written latencies than chronological age-matched (CA) controls, more errors than CA and reading age-matched (RA) controls and writing durations similar to CA controls. Latencies were more affected by frequency, consistency and length in the DD group and the RA group than in CA controls. Children in the DD and RA groups produced longer written latencies in the copying than in the spelling-to-dictation task, while controls in the CA group were not affected by the task. Results indicate that spelling impairments in Spanish children with dyslexia affect the relative involvement of lexical and sublexical information during handwriting. Meanwhile effects on writing speed seem to be related to deficits in reading ability, accuracy scores seem to be poorer than expected by children’s reading skill.Website 
• Martínez-García C, Afonso O, Cuetos F, Suárez-Coalla P, 'Handwriting production in Spanish children with dyslexia: spelling or motor difficulties?'
  Reading and Writing x (2020)
  ISSN: 0922-4777 eISSN: 1573-0905
  Abstract

  Spelling and handwriting are different processes; however, they are learned simultaneously, and numerous studies have shown that they interact. Besides the commonly reported presence of a spelling deficit, previous studies have indicated that handwriting difficulties can also be detected in children with dyslexia. Despite this, this issue has not been sufficiently explored. The goal of the study was to investigate the potential handwriting difficulties met by children with dyslexia and how they might relate to spelling difficulties and to basic graphic skills. Twenty children with dyslexia were compared with a chronological age-matched group and reading level-matched group. Participants completed a spelling-to-dictation task of words and pseudowords, an alphabet writing task, and two graphic tasks. Results showed that children with dyslexia were less accurate and slower in preparing and executing the written response than typically developing peers, but they showed the spelling level expected given their reading ability. Children with dyslexia also performed similarly to children with the same reading level in the alphabet and graphic tasks, with both groups being slower and less fluent than the control age group. Altogether, the results suggest the existence of a delay in the development of handwriting and graphic fluency related to the level of reading and spelling skills rather than the presence of a core deficit affecting fine motor skills in dyslexia. In this sense, it seems that reduced literacy skills can affect the development of other skills that are usually enhanced with handwriting practice, such as fine motor skills.
  

• Afonso O, Suárez-Coalla P, Cuetos F, Ibáñez A, Sedeño L, García A, 'The embodied penman: Effector-specific motor-language integration during handwriting'
  Cognitive Science 43 (7) (2019)
  ISSN: 0364-0213 eISSN: 1551-6709
  Abstract

  Several studies have yielded fine-grained insights on the embodied dynamics of language by revealing how processing of manual action verbs (MaVs) affects the programming or execution of concurrent hand movements. However, virtually all extant studies have relied on highly contrived dual tasks in which independent motoric and linguistic processes are arbitrarily related. To circumvent potential attentional confounds, we conducted the first assessment of motor-language integration during handwriting, an early acquired skill that necessarily integrates both types of processes. Using a digital pen, participants copied carefully matched MaVs, non-manual action verbs, and non-action verbs as we collected measures of motor programming (the time needed to start the writing routine after verb presentation) and motor execution (the time needed to write the whole verb). Whereas motor programming latencies were similar across conditions, the unfolding of motor routines was faster for MaVs than for the other two categories, irrespective of the subjects’ daily writing time. Moreover, this effect remained consistent regardless of whether word meanings were accessed implicitly or explicitly. In line with the Hand-Action-Network Dynamic Language Embodiment (HANDLE) model, such findings suggest that everyday manual movements can be primed by effector-congruent verbs, even in a highly automatized task that seamlessly combines linguistic and motoric processes. In addition, this effect differs from that observed for MaVs in a previous (keyboard-based) typing experiment, suggesting that language-induced sensorimotor resonance during writing depends on the motoric particularities of each production modality. More generally, our paradigm opens new avenues for fine-grained explorations of embodied language processes.
  

  Website 
• Afonso O, Álvarez CJ, 'Constituent frequency effects in the written production of Spanish compound words'
  Memory and Cognition 47 (2019) pp.1284-1296
  ISSN: 0090-502X eISSN: 1532-5946
  Abstract

  The debate about whether compound words are accessed as whole-words or via their constituents remains unresolved, especially in the field of language production. In the present study, three experiments using a copying task examined whether compound words are accessed via their constituents in handwriting production. In Experiment 1, production of compound words and noncompounds was compared. The last inter-letter interval within the first constituent of compounds was observed to be shorter than the same interval in noncompounds, revealing that writing durations are sensitive to morphological processing. In Experiments 2 and 3, the first and second constituent frequency was manipulated respectively. The frequency of both constituents affected writing onset times. Interestingly, the interval between the last two letters of the first constituent was shorter when the second constituent was of high-frequency, suggesting that the effect obtained in this position in Experiment 1 was related to the anticipation of the second constituent. Our findings indicate that both constituents are activated before the initiation of the written response and that the second component is reactivated before the production of the first constituent has finished.
  

  Website 
• Afonso O, Álvarez C J, Martínez C, Cuetos F, 'Writing difficulties in Alzheimer's disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment'
  Reading and Writing 32 (1) (2019) pp.217-233
  ISSN: 0922-4777 eISSN: 1573-0905
  Abstract The present study addresses the scope of the writing difficulties observed in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Patients with AD, patients with MCI and healthy controls performed a written picture-naming task and a direct copy transcoding task in which phonology-to-orthography (P-O) consistency was manipulated. Written latencies, inter-letter durations, mean word pen pressure and number of errors were measured. Results revealed that there was a significant difference between the control group and both groups of patients in written latencies and number of errors. However, in inter-letter interval or mean pen pressure there were significant differences only between the group with AD and the other groups. P-O consistency and the type of task produced similar effects in the three groups of participants, suggesting a general deficit affecting the ability to access/generate orthographic representations. The relevance of these results for understanding the spelling impairment in AD and MCI are discussed.Website 
• Afonso O, Suárez-Coalla P, González-Martín N, Cuetos F, 'The impact of word frequency on peripheral processes during handwriting: A matter of age'
  The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 71 (3) (2018) pp.695-703
  ISSN: 1747-0218 eISSN: 1747-0226
  Abstract Although several studies have found that the sublexical route of spelling has an effect on handwriting movements, the ability of lexical variables to modulate peripheral processes during writing is less clear. This study addresses the hypothesis that word frequency affects writing durations only during writing acquisition, and that at some point of development, the handwriting system becomes a relatively autonomous system unaffected by lexical variables. Spanish children attending Grade 2, 4, and 6 performed a spelling-to-dictation and a copy task in which word frequency was manipulated. Results revealed that written latencies decreased with age, especially between Grade 2 and 4 and also that writing durations  decreased between these two groups. All these measures were longer during copying but the effect of task on written latencies and in-air pen trajectories was smaller for older children. Crucially, a significant word frequency effect on writing durations was observed only in Grade 2. This effect was marginally significant in Grade 4 and disappeared in Grade 6. However, all groups showed a similar effect of word frequency on written latencies. These findings suggest that lexical processes impact peripheral processes during writing acquisition and that this influence diminishes to eventually disappear at some point in development, presumably when the handwriting system becomes an autonomous system.  Website 
• González-Martín N, Suárez-Coalla P, Afonso O, Cuetos F, 'A study of writing mechanisms in Spanish primary education children / Estudio de los mecanismos de escritura en niños españoles de Educación Primaria'
  Infancia Y Aprendizaje 40 (1) (2017) pp.88-119
  ISSN: 0210-3702 eISSN: 1578-4126
  Abstract Several studies performed on deep orthography systems reveal variables that influence writing latencies that occur over the course of learning. In transparent orthographies such as Spanish there are very few studies on writing that measure latencies and duration. The aim of this present study was to take a more in-depth look at knowledge of the writing mechanisms used by Spanish children in primary education, by studying the errors, latencies and duration of the writing of words. To do this, sixty children performed a copying task and a dictation task with regular words of different frequency and length. The obtained results show changes in the writing mechanisms used by the children as they became more expert, as indicated by the greater effect of word length in the first years of primary. This word length effect is a more determining factor with regard to the number of letters in words than for the number of syllables. These results hold important implications for the teaching of writing in Spanish.
  
  Numerosos estudios realizados en sistemas de ortografía profunda muestran las variables que influyen sobre las latencias de escritura a lo largo del aprendizaje. En ortografías transparentes como el castellano son escasos los estudios sobre escritura que recojan medidas de latencias y duración de la escritura. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue profundizar en el conocimiento de los mecanismos de escritura utilizados por niños españoles de Educación Primaria, a partir del estudio de los errores,  las latencias y  la duración de la escritura de palabras. Para ello, 60 niños realizaron una tarea de copia y otra de dictado de palabras regulares con diferente frecuencia y longitud. Los resultados obtenidos muestran cambios en los mecanismos de escritura utilizados por los niños a medida que se hacen más expertos, como indica el mayor efecto de la longitud de las palabras en los primeros cursos. Ese efecto de longitud es más determinante por el número de letras que por el número de sílabas de las palabras. Estos resultados tienen importantes implicaciones en la enseñanza de la escritura en castellano.Website 
• Conrad M, Alvarez CJ, Afonso O, Jacobs AM, 'Sublexical modulation of simultaneous language activation in bilingual visual word recognition: The role of syllabic units'
  Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 18 (4) (2015) pp.696-712
  ISSN: 1366-7289 eISSN: 1469-1841
  Abstract We addressed the question of whether syllabic units of the presented language would activate words containing these syllables in the nonpresented language. In two lexical decision experiments using Spanish and German words presented to two groups of late Spanish-German and German-Spanish bilinguals and to two monolingual control groups, target words' syllable-frequency in the nonpresented language was manipulated. Inhibitory effects of syllable-frequency in the nonpresented language were found only when Spanish-German bilinguals read German L2 words-suggesting that L2 sublexical syllabic units activated L1 syllabic neighbors' representations that would interfere with L2 target processing. On the contrary, no inhibitory effects but rather a facilitation tendency due to syllable-frequency from the nonpresented German language was obtained for both groups of bilinguals reading Spanish words. This dissociation concerning the spread of activation from sublexical units to lexical representations from bilinguals' two languages is discussed in terms of structural differences between the two languages.Website 
• Afonso O, Alvarez CJ, Kandel S, 'Effects of grapheme-to-phoneme probability on writing durations'
  MEMORY & COGNITION 43 (4) (2015) pp.579-592
  ISSN: 0090-502X eISSN: 1532-5946
  Abstract The relative involvement of the lexical and sublexical routes across different writing tasks remains a controversial topic in the field of handwriting production research. The present article reports two experiments examining whether or not the probability of a grapheme-to-phoneme (G-P) mapping affected production during copy of polyvalent graphemes embedded in French (Exps. 1a and 1b) and Spanish (Exp. 2) known words. The relative probabilities of two different G-P mappings associated with the same polyvalent grapheme were manipulated (higher vs. lower probability). In Experiment 1a, we used the polyvalent French grapheme E. Writing durations revealed that the interletter intervals (ILIs) located before and after this letter were shorter and that the letter itself was executed faster in the condition of higher probability of the G-P mapping (e.g., S than in the lower-probability condition (e.g., . In Experiment 1b, we used the sequence TI (e.g., VIC "victim-Martian"), which is less frequent. In this case, we failed to observe significant differences between the conditions. In Experiment 2, effects similar to those obtained in Experiment 1a were found with Spanish words using different pronunciations of the letter C (e.g., , "rest-descent"). Altogether, these results reveal that the link between a grapheme and a phoneme is weighted according to its probability in the language. Moreover, they suggest that a two-phase route linking graphemes to phonemes and phonemes to graphemes is functional during copy.Website 
• Afonso O, Suarez-Coalla P, Cuetos F, 'Spelling impairments in Spanish dyslexic adults'
  Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015) pp.1-10
  ISSN: 1664-1078
  Abstract Spelling deficits have repeatedly been observed in children with dyslexia. However, the few studies addressing this issue in dyslexic adults have reported contradictory results. We investigated whether Spanish dyslexics show spelling deficits in adulthood and which components of the writing production process might be impaired in developmental dyslexia. In order to evaluate the involvement of the lexical and the sublexical routes of spelling as well as the graphemic buffer, lexical frequency, phonology-to-orthography consistency and word length were manipulated in two writing tasks: a direct copy transcoding task and a spelling-to-dictation task. Results revealed that adults with dyslexia produced longer written latencies, inter-letter intervals, writing durations and more errors than their peers without dyslexia. Moreover, the dyslexics were more affected by lexical frequency and word length than the controls, but both groups showed a similar effect of P-O consistency. Written latencies also revealed that while the dyslexics initiated the response later in the direct copy transcoding task than in the spelling-to-dictation task, the controls showed the opposite pattern. However, the dyslexics were slower than the controls in both tasks. Results were consistent with the hypothesis that spelling difficulties are present in adults with dyslexia, at least in a language with a transparent orthography such as Spanish. These difficulties seem to be associated with a deficit affecting both lexical processing and the ability to maintain information about the serial order of the letters in a word. However, the dyslexic group did not differ from the control group in the application of the P-O conversion procedures. The spelling impairment would be in addition to the reading deficit, leading to poorer performance in direct copy transcoding compared to spelling-to-dictation.Website 
• Afonso O, Dominguez A, Alvarez CJ, Morales D, 'Sublexical and Lexico-Syntactic Factors in Gender Access in Spanish'
  Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 43 (1) (2014) pp.13-25
  ISSN: 0090-6905
  Abstract The influence of sublexical and lexico-syntactic factors during the grammatical gender assignment process in Spanish was studied in two experiments using the gender decision task. In Experiment 1, the regularity of the ending of gender-marked nouns (masculine nouns ended in and feminine nouns ended in ) and of nouns with gender-correlated but unmarked word-endings (e.g., ) was manipulated. The results showed that regularity affected reaction times and error rates only in the case of gender-marked nouns, suggesting that the mere statistical distribution of a word-ending across genders is not responsible for the regularity effect. In Experiment 2, gender-marked nouns and gender-unmarked nouns were preceded by a masked prime which could be a definite article (which provides information about the gender of the noun) or a possessive pronoun (which does not contain gender information). The presentation of the definite article led to shorter reaction times and less errors only when the word-ending was different from or . Taken together, these results indicate that gender assignment in Spanish is carried out through different processes depending on the noun ending: gender decisions for gender-marked nouns are based on the gender-to-ending distribution. Meanwhile, gender decisions for unmarked nouns seem to require the retrieval of the corresponding definite grammatical article, regardless of the statistical distribution of the noun ending across genders.Website 
• Roux S, McKeeff TJ, Grosjacques G, Afonso O, Kandel S, 'The interaction between central and peripheral processes in handwriting production'
  COGNITION 127 (2) (2013) pp.235-241
  ISSN: 0010-0277
  Abstract Written production studies investigating central processing have ignored research on the peripheral components of movement execution, and vice versa. This study attempts to integrate both approaches and provide evidence that central and peripheral processes interact during word production. French participants wrote regular words (e.g. FORME), irregular words (e.g. FEMME) and pseudo-words (e.g. FARNE) on a digitiser. Pseudo-words yielded longer latencies than regular words. Letter durations were greater for words at earlier letter positions and greater for pseudo-words at the later positions. Letter durations were longer for irregular than regular words. The effect was modulated by the position of the irregularity. These findings indicate that movement production can be affected by lexical and sublexical variables that regulate spelling processes. They suggest that central processing is not completely finished before movement initiation and affects peripheral writing mechanisms in a cascaded manner. Lexical and sublexical processing does not cascade to the same extent. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Website 
• Afonso O, Alvarez CJ, 'Phonological Effects in Handwriting Production: Evidence From the Implicit Priming Paradigm'
  JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-LEARNING MEMORY AND COGNITION 37 (2011) pp.1474-1483
  ISSN: 0278-7393
  Abstract In the present article, we report 3 experiments using the odd-man-out variant of the implicit priming paradigm, aimed at determining the role played by phonological information during the handwriting process. Participants were asked to write a small set of words learned in response to prompts. Within each block, response words could share initial segments (constant homogeneous) or not (heterogeneous). Also, 2 variable homogeneous blocks were created by including a response word that did not share orthographic onset with the other response (odd-man-out). This odd-man-out could be phonologically related to the targets or not. Experiment 1 showed a preparation effect in the constant homogeneous condition, which disappeared (spoil effect) in the variable condition not phonologically related. However, no spoil effect was found when the odd-man-out shared the phonological initial segment with the targets. In Experiment 2, we obtained a spoil effect in the variable phonologically related condition, but it was significantly smaller than in the variable not phonologically related condition. The effects observed in Experiment 2 vanished in Experiment 3 under articulatory suppression, suggesting that they originated at a sublexical level. These findings suggest that phonological sublexical information is used during handwriting and provide evidence that the implicit priming paradigm (and the odd-man-out version of this) is a suitable tool for handwriting production research.Website 
• Alvarez CJ, Cottrell D, Afonso O, 'Writing dictated words and picture names: Syllabic boundaries affect execution in Spanish'
  APPLIED PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 30 (2009) pp.205-223
  ISSN: 0142-7164 eISSN: 1469-1817
  Abstract Two experiments examined the role of syllables in writing Spanish words. In Experiment 1, participants had to write single words that were aurally presented. The interletter intervals (ILIs) between critical letters were measured. Longer ILIs were found in the intersyllable than the intrasyllable condition. In Experiment 2, the inputs were pictures to remove any potential phonological bias stemming from the input stimulus. Results suggested that the linguistic nature of the input is not determining the output. Post hoc analyses revealed that other characteristics of the stimuli cannot explain the results. These results indicate that syllables are essential units of processing in writing Spanish and that central processes related to spelling and the graphemic buffer affect peripheral processes at movement execution.Website 
• Dunabeitia JA, Aviles A, Afonso O, Scheepers C, Carreiras M, 'Qualitative differences in the representation of abstract versus concrete words: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm'
  COGNITION 110 (2009) pp.284-292
  ISSN: 0010-0277
  Abstract In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different organizational principles for concrete and abstract words in semantic memory. Our results confirm the assumption of a primary organizational principle based on association for abstract words, different from the semantic similarity principle proposed for concrete words, and provide the first piece of evidence in support of this view obtained from healthy participants. The results shed light on the representational structure of abstract and concrete concepts. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Website 

Areas of expertise

• Spelling.
• Writing.
• Psycholinguistics.

Other experience

• Post-doctoral researcher, Université de Potiers (France), October 2015-January 2016.
• Visiting researcher, Universidad de Oviedo (Spain), 2013-2014.
• Postgraduate researcher, Univerisidad de La Laguna, 2010-2012.