A fair lexical decision task for monolingual and multilingual Spanish-speakers

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Educational Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Lexical decision tasks (LDTs) in English predict word reading ability.
• Spanish orthography is more transparent than English.
• Need for efficient and culturally relevant Spanish reading assessments.

Purpose of the Study:

• Develop and validate ROAR Palabra, a Spanish LDT.
• Assess if ROAR Palabra can substitute for traditional reading assessments.
• Ensure linguistic fairness using item-response theory.

Main Methods:

• Developed ROAR Palabra, a self-administered Spanish LDT.
• Used item-response theory for linguistic fairness.
• Correlated ROAR Palabra scores with standardized tests (Woodcock-Muñoz Batería IV).

Main Results:

• Strong correlations found between ROAR Palabra and standardized reading assessments.
• The task demonstrated sensitivity to language proficiency in monolingual and bilingual groups.
• ROAR Palabra proved effective as a proxy measure for word reading.

Conclusions:

• ROAR Palabra is a reliable and valid measure for assessing Spanish word reading.
• The task is a versatile, quick, and culturally adaptable tool for diverse contexts.
• Findings support its use in evaluating reading skills across Spanish-speaking and bilingual populations.