LINGUISTICS SEMINAR: Ilaria Venagli, How dyslexia and bilingualism affect reading strategies

The studies presented in this talk aim to shed light on how reading strategies and associated cognitive skills are modulated by biliteracy in late second language (L2) learners with and without developmental dyslexia (DD). Biliteracy refers to being literate in two (or more) languages, and research suggests that it modulates reading strategies and related cognitive abilities uniquely depending on several factors, including the orthographic depth of the languages being learned. Further, whether two languages are learned simultaneously or sequentially might change the extent to which cross-linguistic transfer effects emerge and modulate the reading networks of bilingual individuals. Orthographic depth refers to the consistency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in (alphabetic) languages, ranging from transparent orthographies to more opaque ones. Children learning to read opaque languages take more time to acquire fluent and accurate reading skills, whilst those learning to read transparent languages develop accurate decoding skills quite early. Further, there is considerable evidence that decoding strategies may also develop differently depending on orthographic depth. Finally, learning to read two orthographies with different orthographic depths may lead to cognitive changes that “accommodate” the demands of the orthographic systems being learned. For instance, learning to read an opaque orthography alongside a transparent one might boost one’s ability to process multiple graphemes simultaneously (Visual Attention Span: VAS). Whilst studies on early biliterates support this hypothesis, little is known about the effects of biliteracy in late biliterates with and without DD. The main goal of these studies is to address this gap by investigating how acquiring an opaque L2 (English) affects reading in learners whose L1 is highly transparent (Italian). The first investigates whether higher L2 proficiency leads to a VAS bootstrapping, whereas the second investigates whether the strategies that are used to decode (pseudo)words change depending on the linguistic context in which words are presented, L2 proficiency, or the presence of DD.)

Tanja Kupisch is inviting you to a scheduled LU Zoom meeting.

WHERE: LU Zoom meeting: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/67006790336?pwd=rRaKDZBnYM3MruCGUuQCZCSJIvgzLJ.1