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Children learning to read in two different orthographic systems are exposed to cross-linguistic interferences. We explored the effects of school (Monolingual, Bilingual) and grade (2nd, 4th, and 6th) on phonological activation during a visual word recognition task. Elementary school children from Spain completed a lexical decision task in English. The task included real words and pseudohomophones following Spanish or English phonological rules. Using the mouse-tracking paradigm, we analyzed errors, reaction times, and computer mouse movements. Children in the bilingual school performed better than children in the monolingual school. Children in higher grades performed better than children in lower grades. The interference effect of Spanish phonology was weak and became weaker in higher grades. Spanish children differentiate between first and second language grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences since early on in the educational process. In 6th grade, children from the bilingual school responded better to words and Spanish pseudohomophones, while children from the monolingual school were less distracted by the English pseudohomophones. Children in the bilingual school had stronger inhibition of Spanish (L1) phonology and stronger activation of English (L2) phonology. Instructional method plays an important role on the processing strategies Spanish children rely on when reading in English. School and grade influence the link between orthographic and phonological representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orthographic learning is one of the steps needed to achieve reading fluency. There are different variables that could influence the formation of orthographic representations. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the previous semantic and phonological knowledge on the formation of orthographic representations. We used a decrease of the length effect as the measure of orthographic learning. We made a reading aloud task that utilised new words with Spanish children from third grade under three different conditions: with prior semantic and phonological training, with prior phonological training and without training. Results showed that knowing the meaning and the phonological form of the words facilitated the formation of orthographic representations, as the length effect was significantly lower than in the other conditions, and it also improved the children's reading performance. Highlights: What is already known about this topicSpanish children from primary education form orthographic representations after approximately six exposures to new words.Phonological previous knowledge facilitates the formation of orthographic representations in children and adults from a transparent or an opaque language.Semantic previous knowledge of words seems to only facilitate the orthographic learning in adults from a transparent language. What this paper addsSemantic and phonological prior training and only phonological prior training increase reading speed.Semantic and phonological previous knowledge makes easier to form orthographic representations in Spanish children, with a transparent orthographic system. Implications for theory, policy or practiceMore knowledge about how children from a transparent language form orthographic representations of new words.Relevance of oral vocabulary (i.e., meaning and phonological form of words) in reading performance.Importance of this previous knowledge on the orthographic learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to reading difficulties, a significant proportion of developmental dyslexics have spelling problems, which persist into adulthood. Studies carried out in languages with opaque orthographies have found that dyslexics frequently make phonological substitutions when spelling and have difficulties in developing orthographic representations of irregular words. Those errors seem to derive from an excessive use of phonological codes when writing. Minimal research in Spanish (relatively transparent orthography) about the relationship between dyslexia and spelling difficulties has been carried out to date. In this study, 19 Spanish-speaking developmental dyslexics (from 7 to 11 years old) and 28 controls (from 6 to 11 years old, distributed in two groups, one matched for age and the other for reading level with the dyslexics) performed a dictation task of 80 stimuli with different levels of orthographic consistency, in order to discover the codes they use in the writing process. Results showed that Spanish children with dyslexia made significantly more spelling errors, especially among the ruled and irregular words. These findings are consistent with the idea that these children have difficulties in developing orthographic representations and use phonological codes more frequently than non-dyslexics, resulting in phonologically plausible errors when writing irregular words. These results have important implications for the treatment of spelling difficulties in children with dyslexia, highlighting the need to focus on the correct acquisition of grapheme-phoneme conversion rules as well as the development of appropriate orthographic representations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• L2 learners decode complex graphemes as native readers do. • L2 learners interiorize English phonology early in development. • Native language orthography has influence on L2 orthographic learning. • Just before middle-childhood is a key stage for biliteracy acquisition. Phonemic correspondences for a particular grapheme are not always congruent across languages. Also, some complex graphemes can be found in some languages but not in others. The purpose of this study is to determine if the congruency and complexity of English graphemes influence letter detection in L2 learners. We further investigated whether age group (7-, 9- and 11-year-old children, and university undergraduates) determines the size of these effects. Participants completed two different letter detection tasks using the mouse-tracking paradigm. Results from Experiment 1 indicate that only younger children are slightly affected by incongruent graphemes. Results from Experiment 2 show that all readers perform worse with complex graphemes. L2 learners interiorize English phonology at early stages, being barely affected by their native Spanish language. Importantly, L2 learners decode complex graphemes similarly to native English readers. Interpretations based on the BIA-d model are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]