AbstractsPsychology

Reading, like many other acquired skills, is developed and refined through extensive formal instruction and practice. However, bilinguals, by virtue of knowing and using two or more languages, necessarily have less first- (L1) and second-language (L2) reading experience than monolinguals who, by definition, read in one language exclusively. Thus, an important question for the study of bilingualism and language generally is how changes in L2 experience affect reading in both the L1 and the L2. While it stands to reason that increased L2 experience should relate to enhanced reading fluency in the L2, it is less clear whether L1 reading fluency should also be affected. Indeed, a commonly held belief within linguistics is that L1 skills of any kind, once acquired, are immune to the impact of L2 experience, particularly in adulthood. However, to the extent that life-long experience can adaptively update the representation and access of complex linguistic knowledge, we would expect L1 and L2 skills to trade-off to some degree as a function of increasing L2 experience. To this end, the present thesis uses eye movement recordings to investigate whether such a trade-off in L1/L2 reading occurs for French-English bilingual younger and older adults, who vary continuously in current L2 experience. The studies presented in this thesis suggest that greater current L2 experience among bilingual younger adults strengthens L2 reading, and more interestingly, weakens L1 reading—contradicting the commonly held belief that L1 skills are immune to experience-dependent change in adulthood. Of note, experience-dependent changes in reading are attenuated for bilingual older adults—suggesting that accumulated life-long L1/L2 experience might counter the influence of current language experience, particularly when processing the more frequently used L1. Accordingly, the impact of current L2 experience on L1/L2 reading varies according to which end of the adult life-span bilinguals are situated. Future research should more closely examine whether the findings observed here occur for other bilingual populations (e.g., children) and other language domains (e.g., production). La lecture, à l'instar d'autres compétences acquises, se développe suite à un enseignement formel et se perfectionne grâce à une pratique rigoureuse. Cependant, les personnes bilingues (qui maîtrisent et utilisent deux, voire plusieurs, langues) ont nécessairement moins d'expérience de lecture en langue maternelle (L1) et en langue seconde (L2) que les locuteurs monolingues, car ces derniers lisent exclusivement dans leur L1. Ainsi, dans le cadre de la recherche sur le bilinguisme et le traitement du langage en général, une question fondamentale demeure : de quelle manière l'accumulation d'expérience avec L2 pourrait-elle affecter la lecture, tant en L2 qu'en L1? Bien qu'il semble logique que l'accumulation d'expérience avec L2 favorise de meilleures performances de lecture en L2, le lien entre l'expérience en L2 et la lecture en L1 semble moins…