Biology subjects

Dunabeitia, J. A.

Publications and source records attributed to Dunabeitia, J. A..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Alternative strategies of orthographic processing: the case of skilled deaf readers

The cognitive factors that enable us to be proficient readers can greatly vary across individuals. The case of skilled deaf readers is emblematic as it shows that high reading performances can be achieved even when lifelong acoustic experience is absent or minimal. Here we present a set of experiments investigating how alternative strategies of orthographic processing can lead to high levels of reading proficiency. Four EEG studies compared behavioral and brain correlates of orthographic processing in skilled deaf readers and matched hearing controls. Using single word recognition and priming paradigms, we investigated two pillars of orthographic processing: letter identity and letter position. Our findings show that, although both groups had similarly accurate reading performance, skilled deaf readers were faster, and they consistently differ from hearing controls in the way they process letter identity. This group difference was observed in both lexical and sublexical tasks and was specifically related to the identity of orthographic representations, regardless of the visual form of the written stimuli (such as character visual similarity and letter case). These findings uncover alternative strategies that make possible high reading performance, even in the absence of acoustic experience. Public Significance StatementThis research identifies alternative orthographic strategies that improve single-word reading efficiency and can potentially serve as effective compensatory tools when phonological processing is impaired.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Neuroanatomical Correlates In Bilinguals: The Case Of Children And Elderly

How bilingualism modulates brain areas beyond the language regions is still controversial. Through a comprehensive set of analyses on brain structure, we investigated brain differences between Basque-Spanish bilinguals and monolinguals in children and the elderly, the most sensitive target groups to detect potential brain differences. In particular, we employed Diffusion MRI in combination with T1-MRI, network-based statistics and a graph-theoretical approach to investigate differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in structural connectivity and topological properties of brain networks. Additionally, regional grey and white matter structural differences between groups were examined. The findings suggest that the effects of bilingualism on brain structure are not solid but unstable. However, lifetime experience of active bilingualism may lead to increased neural reserve in ageing, since better global network graph-efficiency has been observed in the elderly lifelong bilinguals compared to monolinguals.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Differences in word learning: bilingualism or linguistic experience?

Bilinguals may be better than monolinguals at word learning due to their increased experience with language learning. In addition, bilinguals that have languages that are orthotactically different could be more used to dissimilar orthotactic patterns. The current study examines how bilinguals with languages that are orthotactically similar and dissimilar and monolinguals learn novel words that violate or respect the orthotactic legality of the languages they know and how this learning may be affected by the similarity between the bilinguals two languages. In Experiment 1, three groups of children were tested: monolinguals, Spanish-Basque bilinguals (dissimilar orthotactic languages), and Spanish-Catalan bilinguals (similar orthotactic languages). After an initial word learning phase, they were tested in a recall task and a recognition task. Results showed that Spanish-Basque bilingual children performed differently than the other two groups. While Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Catalan bilinguals recognized illegal words worse than legal words, Spanish-Basque bilinguals showed equal performance in learning illegal and legal patterns. A replication study conducted with two new groups of Spanish-Basque children (one group with high Basque proficiency and one group with a lower proficiency) indicated that the effects were not driven by the proficiency in the second language since a similar performance on legal and illegal patterns was observed in both groups. In Experiment 2, two groups of adults, monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals, were tested with the same task used in Experiment 1. The effect seen in children seems to be absent in adults. Spanish-Basque bilingual adults showed better overall learning performance than monolinguals, irrespective of the illegality of the items. Differences between groups could be due to the effect of having acquired literacy and linguistic competence.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

The impact of bilingualism on executive functions and working memory in young adults.

A bilingual advantage in a form of a better performance of bilinguals in tasks tapping into executive function abilities has been reported repeatedly in the literature. However, recent research defends that this advantage does not stem from bilingualism, but from uncontrolled factors or imperfectly matched samples. In this study we explored the potential impact of bilingualism on executive functioning abilities by testing large groups of young adult bilinguals and monolinguals in the tasks that were most extensively used when the advantages were reported. Importantly, the recently identified factors that could be disrupting the between groups comparisons were controlled for, and both groups were matched. We found no differences between groups in their performance. Additional bootstrapping analyses indicated that, when the bilingual advantage appeared, it very often co-occurred with unmatched socio-demographic factors. The evidence presented here indicates that the bilingual advantage might indeed be caused by spurious uncontrolled factors rather than bilingualism per se. Secondly, bilingualism has been argued to potentially affect working memory also. Therefore, we tested the same participants in both a forward and a backward version of a visual and an auditory working memory task. We found no differences between groups in either of the forward versions of the tasks, but bilinguals systematically outperformed monolinguals in the backward conditions. The results are analyzed and interpreted taking into consideration different perspectives in the domain-specificity of the executive functions and working memory.

neuroscience↗