PS_3.110 - Lexicality effect and stress assignment in bilingual children reading Italian as a second language

Bellocchi, S. ¹ , Contento, S. . ¹ , Ceccarelli, I. ¹ & Burani, C. ²

1 Department of Psychology. University of Bologna. Bologna, Italy
2 Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR). Rome, Italy

Contrary to the claim that in transparent orthographies word reading is accomplished mainly by the nonlexical route, Italian developing readers show lexicality and frequency effects and seem to be sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. How do bilingual children with different age of L2 (Italian) first exposure and vocabulary size read L2 words and pseudowords? Two reading aloud experiments investigated lexicality effect and stress assignment in fourth and fifth grade bilinguals and monolinguals. Naming latencies and pronunciation accuracy were analyzed. In Experiment 1, lexicality effect (words read better than pseudowords) and differences between groups (bilinguals and monolinguals) emerged. In Experiment 2, word frequency effect emerged. Moreover, late bilinguals, who are also characterized by lower L2 vocabulary size, were less accurate than early bilinguals and monolinguals in assigning the less dominant stress. Similarly to monolinguals, lexical information seems to be employed in reading Italian as a second language. Furthermore, bilingual readers are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. Stress assignment pattern seems to be affected by the characteristics of second language learners: results are discussed with respect to L2 vocabulary size and age of L2 first exposure.