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Behavioral and Neurophysiological Correlates of Orthographic Learning in L1 and L2 Alphabets
The acquisition of new orthographic representations is a rapid and
highly automatic process in monolingual readers. Our study extends existing
research to biliterate populations, addressing the impact of phonological
inconsistencies across native (L1) and second language (L2) alphabets during
orthographic learning. Behavioral and EEG signals were collected from a group
of 24 Russian-English biliterates via a reading-aloud task using familiar and
novel words repeated across ten consecutive blocks in three Script conditions:
(1) native Cyrillic, (2) non-native Roman, and (3) ambiguous (phonologically
inconsistent graphemes shared by L1 and L2 alphabets). Linear mixed-effects
modelling of both behavioral and ERP data revealed reliable Block x Lexicality
x Script interactions, indicating that naming latencies and brain activity changed
differently across training blocks for novel and familiar words and, importantly,
depending on script presentation. Particularly, novel words presented in the
ambiguous script showed longer naming latencies and slower reading automatization
than those presented in L1 and L2 alphabets. Nonetheless, despite this
interference, their naming latencies matched those of familiar words before the
end of the training, suggesting the attribution of their representations in the
reader's lexicon. The enhancement of early brain responses observed for these
stimuli alongside their training confirmed the improvement in their orthographic
analysis and lexical access. Critically, this pattern of results was not found for
familiar, already represented words, which exhibited a suppression of their brain
activity across repetitions. Overall, our results indicate that phonological
inconsistency interferes with novel word encoding but it does not prevent efficient
attribution of orthographic representations.