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46 Are Reading Strategies Related to the Orthographic Depth of Languages Acquired Through Bilingual Education?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2023

Nicole L Florentino ,
Tiffani P Shelton ,
Danya Lebell ,
Lexie Thomas ,
Jocelyn Caballero ,
Florence Bouhali ,
Ioulia Kovelman ,
Yuuko Uchikoshi Tonkovich  and
Fumiko Hoeft
Nicole L Florentino*
Affiliation:
Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA. The Wright Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Tiffani P Shelton
Affiliation:
Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA. The Wright Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Danya Lebell
Affiliation:
Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA. The Wright Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Lexie Thomas
Affiliation:
The Wright Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Jocelyn Caballero
Affiliation:
Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Florence Bouhali
Affiliation:
Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Ioulia Kovelman
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Yuuko Uchikoshi Tonkovich
Affiliation:
UC Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
Fumiko Hoeft
Affiliation:
Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA. University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
*
Correspondence: Nicole Florentino, Hoeft Laboratory for Learning, Engineering, and Neural Systems - University of California, San Francisco & The Wright Institute, nicole.florentino@ucsf.edu
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Abstract

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Objective:

This longitudinal study investigates whether reading strategies are influenced by the orthographic depth of languages, specifically Spanish or Cantonese, acquired through enrollment in bilingual immersion programs. Spanish shares an alphabet with English and is considered a phonologically transparent language (Sun et al., 2022). Research has shown that second language learners of Cantonese, an opaque language, performed better on orthographic awareness tasks that involve whole-word visual information processing (Wang and Geva, 2003). We hypothesize that students enrolled in a bilingual immersion program will outperform peers in general education (GENED) on selected reading tasks. More specifically, those in Spanish-immersion programs will perform better on English tasks involving phonological processing; whereas those in Cantonese-immersion programs will perform better on single-word/character processing tasks.

Participants and Methods:

Participants (n=102) were native English speakers recruited from the San Francisco Unified School District. Our sample included 42 females and 60 males. Thirty-nine identified as White, 33 Mixed Race, 25 Asian, 4 Latinx, and 1 Black. Thirty-nine children were in GENED, 33 in Spanish immersion programs (Sp), and 30 in Cantonese immersion programs (Cn). Each child was assessed on a core language/behavioral battery at Kindergarten (T1) and 2nd-3rd grade (T2). Time 2 participants were between 7 and 9 years old.

Those that scored at least one standard deviation below the mean (SS=85) on a nonverbal intelligence screener (KBIT-2 Matrices) were excluded to mitigate confounds of intellectual disabilities. Groups' performance in English was compared on English tasks involving phonological processing (CTOPP-2 Blending Words and Elision) and single-word/character information processing tasks (WJ-IV Letter Word Identification and KABC-II Rebus).

Results:

Simple main effects analysis showed that time did have a statistically significant effect on test performance (p <0.001). At T2, analysis revealed a significant impact of school enrollment on Blending Words [F (2, 51.0) = 4.19, p = 0.018]. As predicted, post-hoc analysis revealed the students enrolled in the Spanish-immersion program significantly outperformed those in general education on this task. Across the other three tasks, those enrolled in Spanish and Cantonese immersion programs performed as strong as or better than those in GENED, but the variability was not statistically significant.

Conclusions:

This study uniquely isolated the effects of bilingual education without confounding factors of access to resources of a more heterogeneous socioeconomic sample. Mixed results partially supported our hypotheses: Spanish-immersion participants performed significantly better than those in GENED on one English phonological processing task (Blending Words). Although Cantonese immersion students had a higher mean performance than those in GENED on single-word/-character processing tasks, the variance was not statistically significant. This implies that bilingual education may offer advantages in either reading strategy. According to the literature, characteristics of a language may influence literacy acquisition; thus, subsequent research may continue to examine the effect of learning multiple languages with varying levels of orthographic depth on the development of English reading strategies.

Keywords

bilingualism/multilingualismreading (normal)language: development
Type
Poster Session 07: Developmental | Pediatrics
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 29 , Supplement s1: Final Program Fifty First Annual Meeting International Neuropsychological Society February 1–4, 2023 San Diego, CA, USA , November 2023 , pp. 652 - 653
Copyright
Copyright © INS. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2023