Impact of L2 Reading Proficiency on L1 Transfer in Visual Word Recognition

Reading, in any language, is a complex process. Reading in a second language is even more complicated because of the cross-linguistic influences that come from the reader’s two (or more) languages. In particular, cross-linguistic influences have been shown to affect word recognition processes. Much research has shown that properties of a reader’s first language, especially the writing system, can greatly affect how a reader recognizes words in a second language. However, there are also more universal effects that influence second language word recognition. The comparative influence of reading universal and script-dependent factors has been of particular interest in recent years. Cross-linguistic studies of word recognition have shown that orthographic features of a reader’s first language affect second language word recognition in three main ways: the type of information that readers predominantly rely on during word recognition, the degree to which readers are sensitive to intra-word information, and the efficiency with which readers process the components of words (Akamatsu, 2003). However, these influences have largely been seen in the previous research as static influences that affect readers throughout the language learning process. Thus, the goal of the present study is to investigate whether these cross-orthographic influences on L2 word recognition change as readers become more proficient in reading a second language.