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The modulation of reading strategies by language opacity in early bilinguals: an eye movement study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2015

DIEGO DE LEÓN RODRÍGUEZ*
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, Neurology Unit, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
KARIN A. BUETLER
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, Neurology Unit, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
NOËMI EGGENBERGER
Affiliation:
Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
BASIL C. PREISIG
Affiliation:
Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
RAHEL SCHUMACHER
Affiliation:
Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
MARINA LAGANARO
Affiliation:
Neuropsycholinguistic team, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
THOMAS NYFFELER
Affiliation:
Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
JEAN-MARIE ANNONI
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, Neurology Unit, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
RENÉ M. MÜRI
Affiliation:
Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
*
Address for correspondence: Diego De León Rodríguez, Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Neurology and Clinical Research, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, Freiburgstrasse 10, 3010 Bern, Switzerlanddiego.deleonrodriguez@unifr.ch

Abstract

Converging evidences from eye movement experiments indicate that linguistic contexts influence reading strategies. However, the question of whether different linguistic contexts modulate eye movements during reading in the same bilingual individuals remains unresolved. We examined reading strategies in a transparent (German) and an opaque (French) language of early, highly proficient French–German bilinguals: participants read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words while the First Fixation Location (FFL), its duration and latency were measured. Since transparent linguistic contexts and pseudo-words would favour a direct grapheme/phoneme conversion, the reading strategy should be more local for German than for French words (FFL closer to the beginning) and no difference is expected in pseudo-words’ FFL between contexts. Our results confirm these hypotheses, providing the first evidence that the same individuals engage different reading strategy depending on language opacity, suggesting that a given brain process can be modulated by a given context.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This work was supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation Grant No. 325130_138497. The authors would like to thank Ann Travis for editing the manuscript, as well as Lucas Spierer for his comments on an early version of the manuscript and useful advices in all the steps of this work.

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