Costs and Benefits of Orthographic Inconsistency in Reading: Evidence from a Cross-Linguistic Comparison

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 11; no. 6; p. e0157457
• Main Authors: Marinelli, Chiara Valeria, Romani, Cristina, Burani, Cristina, McGowan, Victoria A, Zoccolotti, Pierluigi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 29.06.2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Accuracy; Analysis; Biology and Life Sciences; Brain research; Child; Children; Children & youth; Comparative analysis; Comparative linguistics; Cost benefit analysis; Decoding; Dyslexia; Elementary school students; England; English language; Female; Humans; Influence; Italian language; Italy; Language; Language Development; Linguistics; Literacy; Male; Mathematical analysis; Multiculturalism; Native language acquisition; Orthography; People and Places; Phonology; Psycholinguistics; Reading; Reading acquisition; Reading comprehension; Reading skills; Reproducibility of Results; Social Sciences; Studies; Teaching methods; Variability; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; Italy
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0157457

We compared reading acquisition in English and Italian children up to late primary school analyzing RTs and errors as a function of various psycholinguistic variables and changes due to experience. Our results show that reading becomes progressively more reliant on larger processing units with age, but that this is modulated by consistency of the language. In English, an inconsistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs earlier on and it is demonstrated by faster RTs, a stronger effect of lexical variables and lack of length effect (by fifth grade). However, not all English children are able to master this mode of processing yielding larger inter-individual variability. In Italian, a consistent orthography, reliance on larger units occurs later and it is less pronounced. This is demonstrated by larger length effects which remain significant even in older children and by larger effects of a global factor (related to speed of orthographic decoding) explaining changes of performance across ages. Our results show the importance of considering not only overall performance, but inter-individual variability and variability between conditions when interpreting cross-linguistic differences.