While it is difficult to demonstrate the separate functioning of languaging and conceptualizing processes, we will describe an unpublished study by Sticht and James which we believe demonstrates the separate functioning of the decoding component of languaging by reading from other ongoing languaging and conceptualizing processes.

In this study college students of high verbal ability and marginally literate men of low verbal ability were asked to aud a fifth-grade level story about Roland and Charlemagne. At the same time they were provided with a typed copy of the story which they were to read as they auded. Occasionally there was a mismatch between what was on the printed page and what was in the spoken story being auded. For instance, the spoken story might state "With the air of a lord he walked. . .", while the printed story would state "With the air of a prince he walked. . .". Thus the mismatch was not semantically detectable; rather there was a discrepancy between the graphic word and the spoken word. When students encountered a mismatch, they were instructed to circle or check the printed word which did not match the spoken word. By counting the errors students made in "tracking" the auding and reading passages, an index of how well students could convert auding and reading materials into some comparable internal form and compare them was obtained.

Measures of immediate retention (multiple-choice tests) were used to index how well students could conceptualize what they were auding and reading. To assess the effects of rate of presentation, one-third of the story was presented at 128 wpm, one-third at 228 wpm, and one-third at 328 wpm. Tracking and immediate retention scores were obtained for each rate of presentation.