Methodological and theoretical issues in cross-linguistic reading research

Theoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 279-291.General introduction -- Paper 1. Consistency and regularity effects in German and English -- Paper 2. A meta-analysis of body-N effects -- Paper 3. Body-N effects across reading acquisition -- Paper 4. Quantifying the degree of reliance on different sublexical correspondences in German and English -- Paper 5. Lexical and sublexical processing in English and German children -- Paper 6. Getting to the bottom of orthographic depth -- General discussion and conclusion.In this thesis we explore methodological and theoretical issues associated with the concept of orthographic depth. In the first section (papers 1-5), we conducted a series of word and nonword reading experiments. We compare the sublexical correspondences underlying reading in English, which is considered to be a deep orthography, and German, which is considered to be a shallow orthography. In experiments with adults, we aimed to find a sensitive and reliable experimental manipulation to explore the reliance on different types of sublexical correspondences across languages. We follow up with experiments with children, to assess the developmental trajectory of sublexical processing. In the second section (paper 6), we discuss issues with defining the concept of orthographic depth, and provide some suggestions as to how this concept can be quantified on a linguistic level.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (291 pages) table