Mirror invariance or generalisation is the ability to recognise objects as being the same regardless of their spatial orientation. However, when, for example, learning to read Roman script, children need to hone these skills so that they can readily discriminate between mirror letters such as b/d or p/b. Korean Hangul makes a particularly…

This case study investigates the reading processes of two bilingual teachers who speak English as a second language and use different first languages--Mandarin Chinese and Korean. The two participants read researcher-selected digital texts in English and in their respective first language, retold the texts, and answered comprehension questions…

The picture-word task presents participants with a number of pictured objects together with a written distractor word superimposed upon each picture, and their task is to name the depicted object while ignoring the distractor word. Depending on the specific picture and word combination, various effects, including the identity facilitation effect…

Background: Precocious readers (PRs) are children who read and comprehend fluently in their native language, without receiving formal instruction. This study examined Hebrew-speaking PRs in comparison with a group of age-matched peers and a group of reading-level-matched peers. By examining Hebrew, which is a transparent orthography when it has…

Unlike alphabetic languages, Chinese text marks no word demarcation. Previous research inserted word-demarcating spaces into Chinese text but found inconsistent effects on reading efficiency. To address the potential trade-off effects of the additional length caused by inserted spaces, this study introduces color-and-font formatting as a word…

The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and…

Mandarin has been added to the list of second additional languages (SAL) that South African learners can choose from. The researchers proactively conducted research pertaining to SAL (Mandarin) since it is a dynamic phenomenon in South Africa. The research question was formulated as follows: "Do factors such as 1) phonemic differences between…

The present study investigated the representation and processing of segmental and tonal information in visual Chinese word recognition in native and non-native Chinese readers. Two experiments using homophone judgement paradigm were conducted. When judging two Chinese characters (Experiment 1), both groups showed difficulties when the segmental…

The current study aimed to explore the effect of first language (L1) orthography on second language (L2) Chinese morphological awareness. One hundred and twenty-nine students (61 L1 English readers and 68 L1 Thai readers) who studied Chinese as a second language participated in this study. They completed four tasks of morphological awareness…

When reading in a second language, a reader's first language may be involved. For word reading, the question is how and at what level: lexical, pre-lexical, or both. In three experiments, we employed an implicit reading task (color judgment) and an explicit reading task (word naming) to test whether a Chinese meaning equivalent character and its…

It has long been acknowledged that immigrant children who are originally exposed to home languages become rapidly socialized into using only English. Although many children ultimately develop receptive skills in their home language, they often become English dominant and rarely have the opportunity for literacy development. There is also a common…

In this paper, we argue that second language (L2) reading research, which has been informed by studies involving first language (L1) alphabetic English reading, may be less relevant to L2 readers with non-alphabetic reading backgrounds, such as Chinese readers with an L1 logographic (Chinese character) learning history. We provide both…