de León Rodríguez Diego, Buetler Karin A, Eggenberger Noëmi, Laganaro Marina, Nyffeler Thomas, Annoni Jean-Marie, Müri René M
Neurology Unit, Laboratory for Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland.
Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Department of Neurology and Clinical Research, University of Bern Bern, Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2016 May 6;7:649. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00649. eCollection 2016.
Reading strategies vary across languages according to orthographic depth - the complexity of the grapheme in relation to phoneme conversion rules - notably at the level of eye movement patterns. We recently demonstrated that a group of early bilinguals, who learned both languages equally under the age of seven, presented a first fixation location (FFL) closer to the beginning of words when reading in German as compared with French. Since German is known to be orthographically more transparent than French, this suggested that different strategies were being engaged depending on the orthographic depth of the used language. Opaque languages induce a global reading strategy, and transparent languages force a local/serial strategy. Thus, pseudo-words were processed using a local strategy in both languages, suggesting that the link between word forms and their lexical representation may also play a role in selecting a specific strategy. In order to test whether corresponding effects appear in late bilinguals with low proficiency in their second language (L2), we present a new study in which we recorded eye movements while two groups of late German-French and French-German bilinguals read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words. Since, a transparent reading strategy is local and serial, with a high number of fixations per stimuli, and the level of the bilingual participants' L2 is low, the impact of language opacity should be observed in L1. We therefore predicted a global reading strategy if the bilinguals' L1 was French (FFL close to the middle of the stimuli with fewer fixations per stimuli) and a local and serial reading strategy if it was German. Thus, the L2 of each group, as well as pseudo-words, should also require a local and serial reading strategy. Our results confirmed these hypotheses, suggesting that global word processing is only achieved by bilinguals with an opaque L1 when reading in an opaque language; the low level in the L2 gives way to a local and serial reading strategy. These findings stress the fact that reading behavior is influenced not only by the linguistic mode but also by top-down factors, such as readers' proficiency.
阅读策略因文字深度（即字素与音素转换规则的复杂程度）不同而在各种语言中有所差异，尤其体现在眼动模式层面。我们最近证明，一组在七岁前同时学习两种语言的早期双语者，在阅读德语时的首次注视位置（FFL）比阅读法语时更靠近单词开头。由于德语在正字法上比法语更透明，这表明根据所用语言的文字深度会采用不同的策略。不透明的语言会引发整体阅读策略，而透明的语言则促使采用局部/串行策略。因此，在两种语言中对伪词的处理都采用局部策略，这表明单词形式与其词汇表征之间的联系在选择特定策略时也可能发挥作用。为了测试在第二语言（L2）熟练度较低的晚期双语者中是否会出现相应的效果，我们开展了一项新研究，在两组晚期德法和法德双语者朗读孤立的法语和德语单词及伪词时记录他们的眼动情况。由于透明阅读策略是局部且串行的，每个刺激的注视次数较多，且双语参与者的L2水平较低，因此在第一语言（L1）中应能观察到语言不透明度的影响。所以我们预测，如果双语者的L1是法语（FFL靠近刺激中间位置，每个刺激的注视次数较少），则会采用整体阅读策略；如果L1是德语，则会采用局部和串行阅读策略。因此，每组的L2以及伪词也应需要局部和串行阅读策略。我们的结果证实了这些假设，表明双语者在使用不透明语言阅读时，只有L1不透明的情况下才能实现整体单词处理；L2水平较低会导致采用局部和串行阅读策略。这些发现强调了这样一个事实，即阅读行为不仅受语言模式影响，还受自上而下的因素影响，如读者的熟练度。
