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

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• English orthography is inconsistent, slowing reading acquisition compared to regular orthographies like Italian.
• Bilingualism's impact on reading speed across languages with varying orthographic consistency is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if long-term bilingualism mitigates orthographic differences in reading speed.
• To determine if the learning order of languages with different orthographic regularities impacts reading performance.
• To explore the role of orthographic consistency in bilingual reading.

Main Methods:

• Studied high-proficiency Italian-English and English-Italian bilinguals with extensive L2 exposure.
• Utilized the CDP++ connectionist model to simulate sequential orthographic learning.
• Compared reading speeds for Italian and English stimuli in blocked vs. mixed presentation orders.

Main Results:

• Reading speed differences were larger for Italian stimuli than English stimuli.
• Italian-English bilinguals showed language-specific processing advantages when stimuli were blocked.
• English-Italian bilinguals did not exhibit the same blocked presentation advantage.

Conclusions:

• Orthographic consistency of the first learned language influences subsequent language learning and reading performance.
• Bilingual reading is constrained by the orthographic properties of both languages.
• Connectionist modeling supports the observed effects of orthographic learning order on bilingual reading.