title: Impact of orthographic transparency on typical and atypical reading development: evidence in French-Spanish bilingual children.
abstract: The present study aimed to quantify cross-linguistic modulations of the contribution of phonemic awareness skills and visual attention span (VA Span) skills (number of visual elements that can be processed simultaneously) to reading speed and accuracy in 18 Spanish-French balanced bilingual children with and without developmental dyslexia. The children were administered two similar reading batteries in French and Spanish. The deficits of the dyslexic children in reading accuracy were mainly visible in their opaque orthography (French) whereas difficulties indexed by reading speed were observed in both their opaque and transparent orthographies. Dyslexic children did not exhibit any phonemic awareness problems in French or in Spanish, but showed poor VA Span skills compared to their control peers. VA span skills correlated with reading accuracy and speed measures in both Spanish and French, whereas phonemic awareness correlated with reading accuracy only. Overall, the present results show that the VA Span is tightly related to reading speed regardless of orthographic transparency, and that it accounts for differences in reading performance between good and poor readers across languages. The present findings further suggest that VA Span skills may play a particularly important role in building-up specific word knowledge which is critical for lexical reading strategies.
authors.affiliation: Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain. Electronic address: m.lallier@bcbl.eu.
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lallier
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Grenoble, France; Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique, France.
authors.forename: Sylviane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Valdois
authors.affiliation: Centre de Diagnostic des troubles du langage et des apprentissages, Département de pédiatrie CHU Nord, Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: Delphine
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lassus-Sangosse
authors.affiliation: Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: Chloé
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Prado
authors.affiliation: Université Grenoble Alpes, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Grenoble, France; GIPSA-Lab, CNRS UMR 5216, Grenoble, France; Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kandel
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: Bilingualism; Dyslexia; Orthographic transparency; Phonemic awareness; Reading; Visual attention span