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Background Methods Results Conclusions Spelling acquisition requires the assimilation of the regularities of the writing system, but these regularities may differ between the native and a foreign language. English spelling acquisition is a challenge for Spanish‐speaking children due to differences in the orthographic systems. The aim of this study was to examine to what extent Spanish‐speaking children use sub‐lexical and lexical information when spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL), and whether this varies across grades.To achieve this, we administered a spelling‐to‐dictation task of monosyllabic words to children 9 to 11 years old. Spelling accuracy, written latencies, and writing durations were analysed as a function of phonology‐to‐orthography consistency, lexical frequency, word length, and the semantic knowledge that the children have of the words.Results showed differences between grades, with word length only influencing younger children. Lexical frequency, consistency, and semantic knowledge facilitated performance in older children. The cumulative exposure to English may lead to an improvement in spelling due to vocabulary growth and increased sensitivity to new spelling patterns and regularities. Such development occurs despite differences between the orthographies of the native and foreign language and even in the absence of explicit instruction in EFL spelling.Semantic information about words helps spelling retrieval during writing in EFL. Spanish‐speaking children develop sensitivity to English orthography and spelling patterns, evident in the older group of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractOral language abilities have been reported to be related to reading development. This relationship seems to be determined by orthographic systems and reading development. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show reading difficulties, although most studies focus on reading comprehension. The present study has two main objectives: to examine the reading performance of a group of Spanish-speaking children with DLD compared to a chronologically age-matched group of typically developing children (TD); and to study the relationship between oral language abilities and reading performance using network analysis. They were administered five standardized tests to obtain measures about oral language abilities and reading performance. Results showed that children with DLD were less accurate and slower in reading than TD children. Meanwhile, the network analyses suggest strong and stable connections between reading and oral production in the DLD group. This finding confirms the importance of language abilities for reading acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has stated that early oral language acquisition difficulties are related to reading and writing difficulties. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) experience difficulties with several dimensions of language. In this study we focus on the specific difficulties of children with DLD in spelling. We examine the impact of lexicality and length in written production of Spanish‐speaking children with DLD. A total of 18 children with language difficulties (Mage = 8;4) were compared with age‐matched children (Mage = 8;2). Participants completed a spelling‐to‐dictation task of words and pseudo‐words, where length was manipulated. A digital tablet was used to collect data and obtain measures of accuracy, latencies and total writing durations. Results showed that children with DLD produced more errors, longer latencies and longer writing durations than age‐matched children. Regarding accuracy, analysis of the errors shows that children in the control group produce few errors, most being substitutions, while children with DLD made more errors and of more varied categories. Moreover, they were more affected by length on writing accuracy than the control group. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject: Children with language difficulties are more likely to present reading difficulties. There are fewer studies analysing the impact of oral language difficulties in writing skills. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: The study suggests that children with oral language difficulties also have impairments in spelling, impacting on accuracy, duration and reaction time, possibly related to poor phonological working memory. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: This study highlights the need to emphasize early oral intervention and language‐related processing skills to help prevent written language difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correct stress assignment is a requirement for fluent reading in alphabetic languages. This study focuses on two nonlexical mechanisms at the core of stress assignment. In particular, the use of a default stress pattern (e.g., penultimate stress) and the Spanish stress mark. In Experiment 1, participants read aloud words and pseudowords with different stress types (on the antepenultimate or the penultimate syllable), and with or without a stress mark. Results showed longer reaction times (RTs) for words and pseudowords with antepenultimate stress. However, as words with antepenultimate stress always have a stress mark, it could be argued that stress type differences could be due to the presence of the stress mark. In Experiment 2, using a priming procedure participants read aloud words and pseudowords in pure versus mixed stress blocks. Again, words and pseudowords with antepenultimate stress were read slower (longer RTs), suggesting that previous differences were due to stress mark rather than stress type. These results indicate that processing stress marks is cognitively demanding when reading in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated which components of the writing production process are impaired in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia (DD) aged 8 to 12 years. Children with and without dyslexia (n = 60) were assessed in their use of the lexical and the sublexical routes of spelling as well as the orthographic working memory system by manipulating lexical frequency, phonology-to-orthography (P-O) consistency, and word length in a copying task and a spelling-to-dictation task. Results revealed that children with dyslexia produced longer written latencies than chronological age-matched (CA) controls, more errors than CA and reading age-matched (RA) controls, and writing durations similar to CA controls. Latencies were more affected by frequency, consistency, and length in the DD group and the RA group than in CA controls. Children in the DD and RA groups produced longer written latencies in the copying than in the spelling-to-dictation task, while controls in the CA group were not affected by the task. Results indicate that spelling impairments in Spanish children with dyslexia affect the relative involvement of lexical and sublexical information during handwriting. Meanwhile, effects on writing speed seem to be related to deficits in reading ability, and accuracy scores seem to be poorer than expected by children's reading skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading becomes expressive when word and text reading are quick, accurate and automatic. Recent studies have reported that skilled readers use greater pitch changes and fewer irrelevant pauses than poor readers. Given that developmental dyslexics have difficulty acquiring and automating the alphabetic code and developing orthographic representations of words, it is possible that their use of prosody when reading differs from that of typical readers. The goal of this study was to investigate whether the reading prosody of Spanish-speaking dyslexics differs from that of typical Spanish readers. Two experiments were performed. The first experiment involved 36 children (18 with dyslexia), and the second involved 46 adults (23 with dyslexia). Participants were asked to read aloud a text which included declarative, exclamatory and interrogative sentences. Data on pausing and reading rate (number of pauses, duration of pauses and utterances), pitch changes, intensity changes and syllable lengthening were extracted from the recordings. We found that dyslexic people read more slowly than typical readers and they also made more inappropriate and longer pauses, even as adults with considerable reading experience. We also observed that dyslexics differed from skilled readers in their use of some prosodic features, particularly pitch changes at the end of sentences. This is probably because they have trouble anticipating some structural features of prose, such as sentence ends. [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]

Abstract The impact of central on peripheral writing processes has been studied mainly in adults and children whose first language is a deep orthographic system. The results suggest that the influence varies according to age, but it also could depend on the orthographic system. The objective of the present work was to address the possible impact of the central (orthographic retrieval) on peripheral (motor execution) processes during writing acquisition in a transparent orthography. To achieve the objective, seventy-five Spanish children performed a copying and a spelling-to-dictation task, where orthographic consistency, lexical frequency and word length were manipulated. The results suggest that the central processes influence the peripheral ones from an early age (when writing has not yet been automated). Specifically, orthographic consistency cascaded into movement production, but it was modulated by task and grade, as this effect was only evident for 2nd grade children when they were asked to perform a spelling-to-dictation task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although several studies have found that the sublexical route of spelling has an effect on handwriting movements, the ability of lexical variables to modulate peripheral processes during writing is less clear. This study addresses the hypothesis that word frequency affects writing durations only during writing acquisition, and that at some point of development, the handwriting system becomes a relatively autonomous system unaffected by lexical variables. Spanish children attending Grades 2, 4, and 6 performed a spelling-to-dictation and a copy task in which word frequency was manipulated. Results revealed that written latencies decreased with age, especially between Grades 2 and 4, and that writing durations decreased between these two groups. All these measures were longer during copying but the effect of task on written latencies and in-air pen trajectories was smaller for older children. Crucially, a significant word frequency effect on writing durations was observed only in Grade 2. This effect was marginally significant in Grade 4 and disappeared in Grade 6. However, all groups showed a similar effect of word frequency on written latencies. These findings suggest that lexical processes impact peripheral processes during writing acquisition and that this influence diminishes to eventually disappear at some point in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orthographic representations of words are indispensable for reading fluency. The ways in which these representations are developed and their resistance to decay are hotly debated topics. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of semantic and phonological representations on the formation of orthographic representations in a transparent orthography. In order to achieve this objective, an experiment with three conditions was carried out. In the first condition, a group of university students were asked to repeatedly read 10 new words after semantic and phonological training, in the second condition another group of participants read the new words after phonological training, and in the third condition participants read without previous training. Finally, a follow-up session was performed to test the resistance to decay of the orthographic representations. The results showed that participants who had received semantic training formed the representations faster than participants in the other conditions, as indicated by the decrease in length effect. These results indicate the important role of previous knowledge when people face new written words. A month later these orthographic representations still remained in the lexicon of the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have suggested that Spanish children with dyslexia have difficulty storing orthographic representations of new words. But given that the syllable plays an important role in word recognition in Spanish, it is possible that the formation of orthographic representations is influenced by the characteristics of the syllables that make up the words. The objective of this study was to determine whether syllabic frequency and syllabic complexity influence orthographic learning in children with dyslexia. We compared the performance of a group of dyslexic children with that of a group of typical readers on a task that involved reading short and long pseudowords six times; we manipulated the frequency and complexity of the syllables from which the pseudowords were constructed. The results showed that dyslexic children do not benefit from syllabic simplicity or frequency when it comes to storing orthographic representations as the length effect in the dyslexic group remained was unchanged after repeated readings, regardless of stimulus characteristics. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies performed on deep orthography systems reveal variables that influence writing latencies that occur over the course of learning. In transparent orthographies such as Spanish there are very few studies on writing that measure latencies and duration. The aim of this present study was to take a more in-depth look at knowledge of the writing mechanisms used by Spanish children in primary education, by studying the errors, latencies and duration of the writing of words. To do this, sixty children performed a copying task and a dictation task with regular words of different frequency and length. The obtained results show changes in the writing mechanisms used by the children as they became more expert, as indicated by the greater effect of word length in the first years of primary. This word length effect is a more determining factor with regard to the number of letters in words than for the number of syllables. These results hold important implications for the teaching of writing in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to read fluently, children have to form orthographic representations. Despite numerous investigations, there is no clear answer to the question of the number of times they need to read a word to form an orthographic representation. We used length effect on reading times as a measure, because there are large differences between long and short words for unknown words, differences that disappear when reading frequent words. Two lists of new words (half short and half long) were presented to 102 second-grade to sixth-grade Spanish children, to be read aloud six times. One of the lists was presented as part of a story and the other in isolation. Comparison of the length effect at the first and sixth exposure showed large differences between short and long words in the first presentation and small differences at the sixth presentation, indicating that Spanish children develop representations of words after just a few repetitions. [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]

Recent studies show that dyslexia persists into adulthood, even in highly educated and well-read people. The main characteristic that adults with dyslexia present is a low speed when reading. In Spanish, a shallow orthographic system, no studies about adults with dyslexia are available; and it is possible that the consistency of the orthographic system favours the reading fluency. The aim of this study was to get an insight of the reading characteristics of Spanish adults with dyslexia and also to infer the reading strategies that they are using. For that purpose, a group of 30 dyslexics ( M age = 32 years old) and an age-matched group of 30 adults without reading disabilities completed several phonological and reading tasks: phonological awareness tasks, rapid automatic naming, lexical decision, word and pseudoword reading, letter detection and text reading. The results showed that highly educated Spanish dyslexics performed significantly worse than the control group in the majority of the tasks. Specifically, they showed difficulties reading long pseudowords, indicating problems in automating the grapheme-phoneme rules, but they also seem to present difficulties reading words, which indicate problems with the lexical route. It seems that the Spanish dyslexic adults, as in deep orthographies, continue having difficulties in phonological awareness tasks, rapid naming and reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different studies have demonstrated that people with dyslexia have difficulties in acquiring fluent reading and writing. These problems are also evident when they learn a second language. The aim of our study was to investigate if there is a linguistic transfer effect for writing in children with dyslexia when they face tasks in English (L2), as well as the possible influence of other linguistic skills (spelling, vocabulary and reading) in English (L2) and in Spanish (L1). Participants completed a series of tasks both in Spanish and English: a picture naming task, a word reading task, a word spelling task, and a written composition of which we analysed its quality through different variables provided by the Coh-metrix software. Our results revealed that children with dyslexia show similar or parallel performance in written composition in both languages, which could imply a language transfer effect from L1 and L2. Besides, basic language skills are related to the characteristics of written composition to a greater extent in English than in Spanish, suggesting the impact of these on the quality of written composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading fluency is one of the basic processes of learning to read. Children begin to develop fluency when they are able to form orthographic representations of words, which provide direct, smooth, and fast reading. Dyslexic children of transparent orthographic systems are mainly characterized by poor reading fluency (Cuetos & Suárez-Coalla ; Spinelli, De Luca, Di Filippo, Mancini, Martelli, & Zoccolotti, ; Wimmer, ). Therefore, the main problem for these children could be the difficulty in developing orthographic representations of the words they read. The aim of this study was to test the ability of dyslexic Spanish-speaking children (whose native language is Spanish) to develop orthographic representations and determine if the context helps them. For this, two experiments were conducted with a group of 100 children, 7-12 years of age. The groups were comprised of 20 dyslexics, 40 chronological age-matched controls and 40 reading level-matched controls. In the first experiment, eight unfamiliar words (four short and four long) were presented six times within the context of a story. In the second experiment, eight pseudowords were presented on a computer and the children had to read them aloud. In both experiments, the reading and articulation times of experimental and control stimuli were compared, before and after the training. Children without dyslexia showed a decrease of the influence of length of word on reading speed, indicating a lexical reading, while for dyslexic children, the influence of length remained unchanged. These results appeared when the stimuli were presented in the context of a story as well as when presented in isolation. In short, our results describe that dyslexic children of transparent orthographic systems have problems in developing orthographic representations of words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Developmental dyslexics have difficulties accessing and retrieving the phonological form of words, in the absence of a deficit at the semantic level. The aim of this work was to study, through the Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) paradigm, the problems of lexical access in Spanish-speaking developmental dyslexics and the relationship with their phonological awareness. Method: A group of developmental dyslexics (14) and other children without reading difficulties (14), aged 7 to 12, performed a picture naming task of medium and low frequency and a task of phonological awareness. Results: The results indicated that dyslexic children generally show a greater number of TOT phenomena than the control group. Despite being able to provide semantic information of the drawing, they had difficulties retrieving partial phonological information. Conclusions: These results indicate that developmental dyslexic children have particular difficulty in accessing the phonological form of words, which may be interesting for the development of intervention programs for these children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La posibilidad de predecir el aprendizaje de la lectura y la escritura ha sido objeto de numerosas investigaciones. Las habilidades de procesamiento fonológico y velocidad de denominación aparecen entre los mejores predictores en la mayor parte de los estudios. Sin embargo, muchos de los resultados se han obtenido en lenguas diferentes del castellano y con estudios que evalúan esas capacidades cuando los niños ya saben leer, por tanto la relación de la lectura y escritura con otras habilidades podría ser fruto del aprendizaje. El objetivo de este estudio fue determinar qué variables permiten predecir la adquisición de la lectura mecánica, así como de la escritura, en castellano. Se aplicaron tareas de conciencia fonémica, repetición de pseudopalabras, amplitud de memoria, fluidez verbal y denominación rápida y automatizada, a un grupo de 50 niños prelectores. Dieciocho meses después, cuando ya sabían leer y escribir, se les evaluó en lectura y escritura. Con los datos obtenidos, se realizaron análisis de correlación de Pearson, análisis factorial y análisis de regresión lineal. La conciencia fonológica fue la variable que mejor predijo la exactitud lectora y la escritura, mientras que la denominación rápida de dibujos predijo la velocidad lectora. Estos datos indican que es posible pronosticar la adquisición de la lectura y escritura antes de su enseñanza. Así mismo, nos sugieren que es posible intervenir tempranamente, especialmente en aquellos niños que presenten riesgo de dificultades de aprendizaje.The prediction of reading and writing acquisition has been the subject of numerous research studies, given the importance of the issue. Phonological processing skills and rapid automatic naming are among the best predictors in most research studies. However, many of the results have been obtained in languages other than Spanish, and from studies that assess these skills in children who are already readers. Therefore, the relationship between reading and writing and other skills could be the result of learning these skills. The aim of this study was to identify variables that predict the acquisition of mechanical reading and writing in Spanish. A group of 50 pre-reading children participated in different tasks (phonemic awareness, pseudoword repetition, memory span, verbal fluency and Rapid Automatic Naming), and eighteen months later, when they could read and write, literacy skills were evaluated. Pearson correlations, factor analysis, and linear regression analysis were carried out on the data. Phonological awareness was the variable that best predicted reading accuracy and writing, while rapid automatized naming of pictures predicted reading speed. These data indicate that it is possible to predict the acquisition of reading and writing skills before they are taught. Furthermore, these results suggest that early intervention is possible, especially in those children who are at risk of learning difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-linguistic studies suggest that the orthographic system determines the reading performance of dyslexic children. In opaque orthographies, the fundamental feature of developmental dyslexia is difficulty in reading accuracy, whereas slower reading speed is more common in transparent orthographies. The aim of the current study was to examine the extent to which different variables of words affect reaction times and articulation times in developmental dyslexics. A group of 19 developmental dyslexics of different ages and an age-matched group of 19 children without reading disabilities completed a word naming task. The children were asked to read 100 nouns that differed in length, frequency, age of acquisition, imageability, and orthographic neighborhood. The stimuli were presented on a laptop computer, and the responses were recorded using DMDX software. We conducted analyses of mixed-effects models to determine which variables influenced reading times in dyslexic children. We found that word naming skills in dyslexic children are affected predominantly by length, while in non-dyslexics children the principal variable is the age of acquisition, a lexical variable. These findings suggest that Spanish-speaking developmental dyslexics use a sublexical procedure for reading words, which is reflected in slower speed when reading long words. In contrast, normal children use a lexical strategy, which is frequently observed in readers of opaque languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common to see mirror errors in letters in early stages of reading due to the mirror-generalization process that allows a visual stimulus to be identified independently of its orientation. To avoid such errors, this process must be inhibited. A special case would be children with dyslexia since their difficulties with the alphabetic code may also delay the acquisition of correct letter orientation. We investigated the relationship between reversible errors in reading and dyslexia. Twenty-seven Spanish-speaking children with dyslexia (7–12 years old) and 27 chronological-age-matched controls performed a 'same-different' letter decision task on reversible and non-reversible letters. Results showed that all participants required more time and committed more errors in discriminating reversible letters. In addition, worse execution was observed in the dyslexic group, which seems to indicate that this group is delayed in the acquisition of correct letter orientation. Therefore, our results indicated that overcoming reading errors in mirrors depends to some extent on the reading competence of the children and the ability to inhibit the process of generalization of mirrors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between written words and their pronunciation varies considerably among different orthographic systems, and these variations have repercussions on learning to read. Children whose languages have deep orthographies must learn to pronounce larger units, such as rhymes, morphemes, or whole words, to achieve the correct pronunciation of some words. However, children whose languages have transparent orthographies need only learn to pronounce graphemes to be able to read any word. In this study, the reading evolution of Spanish-speaking children was investigated for the purpose of discovering when and for what types of stimuli lexical information is used in Spanish. Five- to 10- year-old children were presented with lists of stimuli in which lexicality, frequency, and length were manipulated. The results in terms of reading accuracy and speed showed that the influence of stimulus length is great in the early grades and later diminishes, and just the opposite is the case for lexicality and frequency. These data suggest that reading acquisition in Spanish constitutes a continuum that ranges from phonological recoding to the use of lexical strategies, and that this transition is made at a very early stage, at least for the most frequent words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of whether dyslexic children suffer from syntactic deficits that are independent of limitations with phonological processing. We looked at subject-verb agreement errors after sentence subjects containing a second noun (the attractor) known to be able to attract incorrect agreement (e.g., "the owner(s) of the house(s) is/are away"). In the general population, attraction errors are not straightforwardly dependent on the presence or absence of morphophonological plural markers but on their syntactic configuration. The same would be expected for dyslexic children if their syntactic problems are not phonological in nature. We also looked at the possible effect of system overload on syntactic processing by comparing auditory and written presentation of stimuli and stimuli with high and low frequency attractors. Dyslexic children produced more agreement errors than age-matched controls, but their errors were distributed in the expected manner and did not align with the presence of morphophonological number markers in the subject overall. Furthermore, there was no effect of either presentation mode or attractor frequency on the number of agreement errors. Our results confirm the existence of syntactic difficulties in dyslexia and suggest that they are not due to a phonological deficit or to verbal working memory limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have illuminated how processing manual action verbs (MaVs) affects the programming or execution of concurrent hand movements. Here, to circumvent key confounds in extant designs, we conducted the first assessment of motor–language integration during handwriting—a task in which linguistic and motoric processes are co‐substantiated. Participants copied MaVs, non‐manual action verbs, and non‐action verbs as we collected measures of motor programming and motor execution. Programming latencies were similar across conditions, but execution was faster for MaVs than for the other categories, regardless of whether word meanings were accessed implicitly or explicitly. In line with the Hand‐Action‐Network Dynamic Language Embodiment (HANDLE) model, such findings suggest that effector‐congruent verbs can prime manual movements even during highly automatized tasks in which motoric and verbal processes are naturally intertwined. Our paradigm opens new avenues for fine‐grained explorations of embodied language processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psycholinguistic studies have shown that there are many variables implicated in language comprehension and production. At the lexical level, subjective age of acquisition (AoA), the estimate of the age at which a word is acquired, is key for stimuli selection in psycholinguistic studies. AoA databases in English are often used when testing a variety of phenomena in second language (L2) speakers of English. However, these have limitations, as the norms are not provided by the target population (L2 speakers of English) but by native English speakers. In this study, we asked native Spanish L2 speakers of English to provide subjective AoA ratings for 1604 English words, and investigated whether factors related to 14 lexico-semantic and affective variables, both in Spanish and English, and to the speakers' profile (i.e., sociolinguistic variables and L2 proficiency), were related to the L2 AoA ratings. We used boosted regression trees, an advanced form of regression analysis based on machine learning and boosting algorithms, to analyse the data. Our results showed that the model accounted for a relevant proportion of deviance (58.56%), with the English AoA provided by native English speakers being the strongest predictor for L2 AoA. Additionally, L2 AoA correlated with L2 reaction times. Our database is a useful tool for the research community running psycholinguistic studies in L2 speakers of English. It adds knowledge about which factors—linked to the characteristics of both the linguistic stimuli and the speakers—affect L2 subjective AoA. The database and the data can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/gr8xd/?view_only=73b01dccbedb4d7897c8d104d3d68c46. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expressive reading is considered one of the subprocesses involved in reading fluency, and good readers show greater changes in tone and fewer unnecessary pauses than bad ones. Given the high frequency of reading difficulties in specific language impairment (SLI), there may be certain differences in the use of prosody among children with SLI. The purpose of this study was to research whether prosody in the reading of children with Spanish SLI differs from that in the reading of typical readers. To do so, 44 children (SLI and control) read aloud a text which contained declarative, interrogative and exclamatory sentences. Different prosodic parameters referring to length, tone and intensity were measured. The results showed that the children with SLI read slower, commit more errors and make more inappropriate pauses. Furthermore, fewer pitch variations were found in the interrogative sentence and in the final features of the sentence. These results confirm the relationship between decoding and prosody; therefore, interventions with these children should bear in mind the practice of expressive reading while learning reading fluency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the prosody abilities on top of phonological and visual abilities in children with dyslexia in Spanish that can be considered a syllable-timed language. The performances on prosodic tasks (prosodic perception, rise-time perception), phonological tasks (phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal working memory), visual tasks (visual search) of 32 eleven-year-old children with dyslexia were compared with those of 32 typical readers with the same chronological age and 32 reading-matched younger children. It was found that children with dyslexia scored lower than typical readers on phonological and prosodic perception tasks but not on rise perception tasks. It can thus be concluded that children with dyslexia in Spanish show a prosodic impairment that may originate from subtle auditory-processing deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We used mouse tracking to determine how country of origin and stimuli language influence visual word recognition in bilingual children.Children attending bilingual schools in Spain and the USA completed a lexical decision task in English. The task included real English words (e.g., true), and pseudohomophones following Spanish (e.g., tru) and English (e.g., troo) orthographical rules.Bilingual children from both countries performed worse when responding to English pseudohomophones (within-language interference) than Spanish pseudohomophones (between-language interference).The children from the USA outperformed the children from Spain in almost every measure. Interestingly, their mouse trajectories followed a different pattern.When responding to pseudohomophones, children from the USA showed a pronounced initial deviation toward the incorrect response (likely due to a strong activation of the phonology of the real English word) followed by a very effective corrective movement (likely due to an orthographic verification mechanism).Mouse tracking provides novel insights regarding language activation in bilingual readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• 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]

Background: Prosodic reading is one of the steps needed to achieve reading fluency. It is already known that English children develop their reading prosody from the earliest grades of primary school, showing the greatest improvement between first and second grade, but there are no Spanish studies of the development of reading prosody in the first years of school. Reading prosody may develop earlier in Spanish children as Spanish is a transparent language, which makes it possible to achieve high accuracy in the first year of learning to read. Method: We performed a longitudinal study, monitoring children from first to third grade. The children were asked to read aloud a text including declarative sentences containing high‐frequency and low‐frequency words and interrogative sentences; we analysed the usual prosodic variables (i.e., pauses, duration of different segments and pitch variations). Results: The results showed that younger readers made more and longer pauses and read less accurately. Moreover, the frequency words affected accuracy in all three grades, but only modified reading time in the first and second grades. We found no differences between the grades with respect to declarative sentences, but reading in all grades was influenced by word frequency, with a flatter final intonation. In the case of interrogative sentences, we found that first graders had a flatter melodic contour, whereas second graders tended to exaggerate the final change in intonation. Conclusions: Our results confirmed that reading fluency increases dramatically between first and second grade. Although Spanish has a transparent orthographic system, Spanish children seem to develop reading prosody similarly to children using opaque languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies of the relationship between reading fluency and reading comprehension have traditionally focused on primary schools and narrative texts. However, reading fluency continues to develop during secondary school, when the texts used most are expository texts. Method: The aim of our study was to investigate reading fluency and reading comprehension in secondary-school students, comparing two texts (i.e. narrative and expository) containing various types of sentences (i.e. declarative, adversative and enumerative sentences). Results: We found differences in reading fluency between narrative and expository texts, the expository text being read with a more marked prosody (pauses and melodic contour) suggesting that readers rely on this for their understanding. In addition, we also found a relationship between reading fluency and reading comprehension, with a greater relationship of prosodic variables with the expository text than with the narrative one. Conclusions: Our results confirm that reading fluency continues to develop during secondary school. The expository text, due to its increased difficulty, seemingly needs to lean on and exaggerate the prosody more when reading in order to understand it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Handwriting speed does not develop at the same pace as graphic speed. • Handwriting speed is independent of graphic speed by the age of 12. • Lexicality and word length did not affect writing durations in children aged 8-12. • Spanish 8-12-year-olds use both lexical and sublexical information to spell. The present study addresses how handwriting speed increases with age among Spanish 8-, 10- and 12-year-old children (n = 60), and how this progression is related to spelling and more general graphic skills. Handwriting speed was measured in a spelling-to-dictation and a copying task, and graphic speed was measured in a trail tracing task. Results revealed that handwriting speed significantly increased from age 8 to 10 and remained stable up to 12 years of age, while graphic speed substantially increased only between 10 and 12 years of age. Thus, handwriting speed and graphic speed do not seem to follow the same pattern of development. Moreover, the relationship between linguistic processes and graphic skills with handwriting speed was not the same for all the groups. In the younger group, a different speed profile was obtained for each task, while in the groups of 10- and 12-year-olds, speed was similar in all the linguistic tasks. Graphic speed was positively correlated with speed in the spelling task only around the age of 10, and by age of 12 graphic speed correlated negatively when handwriting neatness was prioritized. Altogether, these results show that handwriting speed becomes consistent around the age of 10, when it is mostly affected by spelling ability and, in some circumstances, by graphic speed. By the age of 12, speed in linguistic tasks becomes decoupled from graphic speed and it is adapted depending on the relative importance of neatness and speed for the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]