Word recognition processes in monolingual and bilingual readers

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Good literacy skills are essential for full participation in our knowledge-based economy. The long-term goal of my research program is to understand the mental representations and processes involved in the comprehension of written words by both monolinguals and bilinguals, how these change with increasing reading skill, and why some children have difficulty learning to read. The work will contribute both to the development of cognitive theories of language processing and to an understanding of reading disorders.   One focus of my research is on the mental representations and processes involved in deriving the sounds (phonology) and meanings of printed words. Phonological processing is critical to understand because it is becoming increasingly clear that it plays an important role both in learning to read and in skilled silent reading for meaning. The proposed studies will investigate how readers derive the phonological representations of multisyllabic words. Although these words make up the majority of the words that we read, most research to date has used only monosyllabic words. Another focus of my research concerns how bilinguals represent and process their two languages. Many individuals in Canada and in the rest of the world speak more than one language, yet most psycholinguistic research has been conducted on monolinguals. Consequently, theories of bilingual word recognition are less well developed than those that focus on reading in one language. A key question addressed in this proposal is whether bilinguals can selectively activate words in just one of their languages or whether activation is nonselective for language.   In summary, the proposed research program will advance our understanding of the mental representations and processes involved in the comprehension of written words. The work will contribute to the advancement of theoretical models by extending research to multisyllabic words and to bilingual readers. Furthermore, research on phonological processing and on interactions between a bilingual's languages addresses two areas of concern for children who are having difficulties in learning to read.