Phonemic representations in speech perception and production: Recalibration by reading acquisition

Description du projet

Réétalonnage phonémique pendant l’alphabétisation

L’alphabétisation refaçonne-t-elle notre inventaire phonémique? Afin de montrer que c’est bien le cas, le projet ReadCalibration, financé par l’UE, étudiera le cours du temps et les propriétés précises de ce réétalonnage. Il s’agit de la première étude systématique du réétalonnage phonémique au cours du processus d’alphabétisation. Les résultats génèreront de précieuses connaissances pour la recherche pragmatique et les comptes théoriques de la perception et de la production linguistiques,ainsi que du réétalonnage phonémique. Le projet, qui fusionnera deux domaines de recherche (l’alphabétisation et le réétalonnage phonémique), démontrera que les représentations phonémiques deviennent plus stables et moins disséminées au cours du processus d’apprentissage de la lecture. Les résultats du projet auront d’importantes répercussions sur le domaine clinique (théories et remédiation de la dyslexie et de la surdité) ainsi que sur les politiques sociales et l’éducation.

Objectif

The main goal of this project is to demonstrate that reading acquisition (RA) drastically reshapes our phonemic inventory, and to investigate the time-course and fine-grained properties of this recalibration. The main innovative and ground-breaking aspect of this project is the merging of two research fields, (1) reading acquisition and (2) phonemic recalibration, together with a deep and extensive exploration of the (3) perception-production link, which results in a new research line that pushes the boundaries of our understanding of the complex interactions between auditory and visual language perception and production.

We will demonstrate that phonemic representations (PRs) become more stable (less dispersed) during the process of learning to read, and that this recalibration varies according to the grapheme-phoneme conversion rules of the reading system. We will explore such recalibration by means of the first cross-linguistic longitudinal study examining the position and dispersion of PRs, both in perception and production of phonemes and words. Secondly, we will explore how recalibration develops when RA is impaired as is the case in dyslexic children –informing the research field on (4) dyslexia– and when pre-reading PRs are unstable as is the case in deaf children with cochlear implants –informing the research field on (5) deafness. Finally, the research will also be extended to PR recalibration during RA in a second language –informing the research on (6) bilingualism.

This proposal provides the first systematic investigation of phonemic recalibration during literacy acquisition, and will provide important insight for pragmatic research and theoretical accounts of language perception and production and phonemic recalibration. This project will also have major implications for the clinical field (theories and remediation of dyslexia and deafness) and for social policies and education (bilingualism, spoken and written language teaching).