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Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data

English serves as today’s lingua franca, a role not eased by the inconsistency of its orthography. Indeed, monolingual readers of more consistent orthographies such as Italian or German learn to read more quickly than monolingual English readers. Here, we assessed whether long-lasting bilingualism w...

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Autores principales: Paulesu, Eraldo, Bonandrini, Rolando, Zapparoli, Laura, Rupani, Cristina, Mapelli, Cristina, Tassini, Fulvia, Schenone, Pietro, Bottini, Gabriella, Perry, Conrad, Zorzi, Marco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8301906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34209045
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11070878
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author Paulesu, Eraldo
Bonandrini, Rolando
Zapparoli, Laura
Rupani, Cristina
Mapelli, Cristina
Tassini, Fulvia
Schenone, Pietro
Bottini, Gabriella
Perry, Conrad
Zorzi, Marco
author_facet Paulesu, Eraldo
Bonandrini, Rolando
Zapparoli, Laura
Rupani, Cristina
Mapelli, Cristina
Tassini, Fulvia
Schenone, Pietro
Bottini, Gabriella
Perry, Conrad
Zorzi, Marco
author_sort Paulesu, Eraldo
collection PubMed
description English serves as today’s lingua franca, a role not eased by the inconsistency of its orthography. Indeed, monolingual readers of more consistent orthographies such as Italian or German learn to read more quickly than monolingual English readers. Here, we assessed whether long-lasting bilingualism would mitigate orthography-specific differences in reading speed and whether the order in which orthographies with a different regularity are learned matters. We studied high-proficiency Italian-English and English-Italian bilinguals, with at least 20 years of intensive daily exposure to the second language and its orthography and we simulated sequential learning of the two orthographies with the CDP++ connectionist model of reading. We found that group differences in reading speed were comparatively bigger with Italian stimuli than with English stimuli. Furthermore, only Italian bilinguals took advantage of a blocked presentation of Italian stimuli compared to when stimuli from both languages were presented in mixed order, suggesting a greater ability to keep language-specific orthographic representations segregated. These findings demonstrate orthographic constraints on bilingual reading, whereby the level of consistency of the first learned orthography affects later learning and performance on a second orthography. The computer simulations were consistent with these conclusions.
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spelling pubmed-83019062021-07-24 Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data Paulesu, Eraldo Bonandrini, Rolando Zapparoli, Laura Rupani, Cristina Mapelli, Cristina Tassini, Fulvia Schenone, Pietro Bottini, Gabriella Perry, Conrad Zorzi, Marco Brain Sci Article English serves as today’s lingua franca, a role not eased by the inconsistency of its orthography. Indeed, monolingual readers of more consistent orthographies such as Italian or German learn to read more quickly than monolingual English readers. Here, we assessed whether long-lasting bilingualism would mitigate orthography-specific differences in reading speed and whether the order in which orthographies with a different regularity are learned matters. We studied high-proficiency Italian-English and English-Italian bilinguals, with at least 20 years of intensive daily exposure to the second language and its orthography and we simulated sequential learning of the two orthographies with the CDP++ connectionist model of reading. We found that group differences in reading speed were comparatively bigger with Italian stimuli than with English stimuli. Furthermore, only Italian bilinguals took advantage of a blocked presentation of Italian stimuli compared to when stimuli from both languages were presented in mixed order, suggesting a greater ability to keep language-specific orthographic representations segregated. These findings demonstrate orthographic constraints on bilingual reading, whereby the level of consistency of the first learned orthography affects later learning and performance on a second orthography. The computer simulations were consistent with these conclusions. MDPI 2021-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8301906/ /pubmed/34209045 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11070878 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Paulesu, Eraldo
Bonandrini, Rolando
Zapparoli, Laura
Rupani, Cristina
Mapelli, Cristina
Tassini, Fulvia
Schenone, Pietro
Bottini, Gabriella
Perry, Conrad
Zorzi, Marco
Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data
title Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data
title_full Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data
title_fullStr Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data
title_full_unstemmed Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data
title_short Effects of Orthographic Consistency on Bilingual Reading: Human and Computer Simulation Data
title_sort effects of orthographic consistency on bilingual reading: human and computer simulation data
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8301906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34209045
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11070878
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