Elisabeth Demont

Phonological processing in relation to reading: An fMRI study in deaf readers

Without special education, early deprivation of auditory speech input, hinders the development of phonological representations and may alter the neural mechanisms of reading. By using fMRI during lexical and rhyming decision tasks, we compared in hearing and pre-lingually deaf subjects the neural activity in functional regions of interest (ROIs) engaged in reading. The results show in deaf readers significantly higher activation in the ROIs relevant to the grapho-phonological route, but also in the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) and the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). These adjustments may be interpreted within the dual route model of reading as an alternative strategy, which gives priority to rule-based letter-to-sound conversion. Activation in the right IFG would account for compensation mechanisms based on phonological recoding and inner speech while activation in the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) may relate to the cognitive effort called for by the alternative strategy. Our data suggest that the neural mechanisms of reading are shaped by the auditory experience of speech.

Développement métalinguistique et apprentissage de la lecture chez les enfants bilingues

Resume Dans le champ du bilinguisme de l’enfant et en lien avec l’apprentissage de l’ecrit, le developpement des competences metalinguistiques est un domaine de recherche bien developpe mais faisant apparaitre neanmoins des donnees contradictoires.Notre objectif est d’effectuer une analyse critique des recherches conduites ces trente dernieres annees sur les competences meta-phonologiques, meta-syntaxiques, meta-morphologiques et l’apprentissage de la lecture en contexte bilingue. La synthese des donnees issues de comparaisons entre bilingues et monolingues permettra d’identifier plusieurs facteurs specifiant les effets du bilinguisme sur le developpement metalinguistique et des habiletes en lecture. L’analyse des langues en contact, de leurs relations et de leurs specificites constitue aussi un champ d’investigation fecond pour aboutir a un point de vue nuance sur le developpement de ces competences en contexte bilingue.

Metalinguistic development in French learners enrolled in an immersion programme: A longitudinal study

Research on bilingualism has shown a bilingual advantage in phonological and syntactic awareness, and more recently on some morphological awareness tasks in children who had acquired two languages simultaneously. However, there is still limited knowledge about this advantage in students who acquire a second language in school after having developed a first language. The present longitudinal study addressed this issue by comparing, over the first two years of primary school, the development of metalinguistic abilities in 33 French learners enrolled in an immersion French–German programme to that of 43 French monolingual peers. Results support the bilingual advantage and add to the growing body of research reaching the same conclusion. In this study, this advantage appears as early as in first grade and the gap favouring second language learners widens with time. The results are discussed in light of differences between the characteristics of the two languages.