Lallier, M. 1 , Lassus-Sangosse, D. 3 , Prado, C. 3 , Valdois, S. 2, 5 & Kandel, S. 2, 4
1 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). Donostia. Spain.
2 Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Grenoble, France
3 Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Grenoble, France
4 Universite Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble, France
5 CNRS, France
Nine French-Spanish bilingual dyslexic children and nine French-Spanish bilingual skilled readers attending the same bilingual school and matched for chronological age, non verbal IQ and socioeconomic background, underwent a neuropsychological screening similar in both French and Spanish. Participants were given a series of tasks evaluating their reading and spelling skills, together with their phonological and visual-attentional skills. Both accuracy and speed measures obtained on the tasks were normalized between languages so that language of assessment effects on performance (i.e. French or Spanish) could be quantified. The dyslexic group showed similar reading speed deficits relative to controls in both languages in line with a deficit of specific orthographic memory. Moreover, the dyslexic children showed both reduced reading and spelling accuracy deficits in Spanish as compared to the corresponding deficits in French, in line with the fact that using analytic procedures in transparent/consistent orthographies results in better reading/spelling accuracy. According to a specific orthographic memory deficit in dyslexic children, their visual attention skills were similarly impaired in both languages and no item lexicality effect (words versus pseudowords) on reading accuracy was found neither in Spanish nor in French. Moreover, the dyslexic children showed an impairment affecting spelling accuracy for Spanish words with an arbitrary orthography only and French inconsistent words. An additional deficit found on pseudoword spelling only in French may reflect the greater inconsistency regarding phono-graphemic mappings in this language. Lastly, metaphonological abilities were found to be generally better in Spanish whereas visual attention skills requiring no verbal report were found to be generally better in French. Overall, the present findings suggest that the same neurobiological dysfunction may lead to variations regarding behavioral reading/spelling disorders. Importantly, orthographic transparency and consistency of the language assessed may constrain the expression of such deficits and modulate the cognitive skills necessary for literacy development.