TRANSPAREADING : Reading in different orthographic systems

The project investigates the impact of orthographic transparency and bilingualism on reading (strategies, neural bases) in children and adults.

The project at a glance

Start date:

01 Oct 2023
Duration in months:

48
Funding:

University of Luxembourg / Lorraine Université d'Excellence
Principal Investigator(s):

Aliette LOCHY

Christine SCHILTZ

About

Reading implies conversion of letters strings (orthography) into pronunciations (phonology). This process is a key component of visual word recognition and relies on posterior brain areas of the left hemisphere. Alphabetic languages vary in their consistency between orthographic and phonological forms, which leads to different strategies for learning to read. The literature has provided behavioral and neural evidence that the grain-size of the information processed for visual word recognition depends on the complexity of the orthographic system. This shed light on the plasticity of the neural pathway for reading and its modulation by bilingualism and reading disorders. However, there is a need to further understand how orthographic transparency guides the development of the lexical and sub-lexical pathways and also to clarify the influence of the orthographic characteristics of a first language (L1) on the acquisition of a second language (L2). Furthermore, if the English writing system has been studied extensively, information about the French and German languages is more scattered and deserves more attention. Therefore, the current project will investigate (1) how the orthographic depth modulates the grain-size of information processed for word recognition across German/French languages, (2) the emergence of lexical representations in bilingual children and (3) the influence of dyslexia on visual word recognition across languages differing in transparency. We will assess the word superiority effect and the word-length effect at a behavioral level and combine these measures with EEG recordings using Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) with an oddball design to measure neural response to regular and irregular words.