# Bilingual and cross-cultural investigation of developmental dyslexia

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2024 · $558,539

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of literacy that affects monolinguals and bilinguals alike, including
Chinese-English bilinguals, who make up >3 million of the US population (US Census Bureau, 2015). At the
onset of English-dominant schooling, bilinguals with dyslexia often experience a progressive decline in home
language use. Yet, bilingualism theories pose that a bilingual’s two languages interact in ways that enhance
children’s global language and literacy faculties (Hernandez, 2019). To advance literacy perspectives, we seek
to understand the impact of cross-linguistic interactions on literacy development in bilinguals with dyslexia.
Our objective is to uncover how Chinese-English bilingualism influences literacy development in children with
dyslexia. We adopt the Lexical Quality (Perfetti 2002; 2021) framework to conceptualize dyslexia as an
alteration in the development of sound-to-print and meaning-to-print associations. Chinese orthography
emphasizes meaning-to-print associations (McBride, 2021). Our preliminary findings suggest that neurotypical
Chinese-English bilinguals form stronger meaning-to-print associations and show stronger engagement of the
semantic neurocircuits than English monolinguals, in English (Sun, 2021; 2022). The project’s hypothesis is
that bilingual experiences with Chinese influence dyslexia by strengthening semantic literacy skills in English.
To test this hypothesis, we focus on semantic and phonological literacy skills in Chinese-English bilinguals and
English monolinguals educated in the US, and Chinese monolinguals educated in Taiwan (ages 8-10, n=365
per group, n=50 with dyslexia per group). Children will complete lexical morphology and phonology functional
Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging tasks and literacy measures in each of their language(s).
We seek to determine the effects of bilingualism on learning to read in neurotypical bilinguals (Aim 1) and
bilinguals with dyslexia (Aim 2). Direct cross-linguistic comparisons of monolinguals in the US and Taiwan will
help isolate language-specific effects of bilingualism in dyslexia (Aim 3). The approach will provide empirical
bases to (1) uncover mechanisms that influence literacy in bilinguals with dyslexia; (2) advance theories
through cross-linguistic evidence on the development of foundational reading competences in structurally-
distinct orthographies; (4) specify sources of individual variability in neuro-cognitive processes during the key
periods of brain development for learning to read; (5) focus on semantic literacy skills to inform lexical
morphology instruction for children with dyslexia. The project will advance our understanding of children’s
emerging neural architecture for learning to read in linguistically-diverse learners with and without dyslexia.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10828791
- **Project number:** 5R01HD111637-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Ioulia Kovelman
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $558,539
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-04-14 → 2028-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10828791

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10828791, Bilingual and cross-cultural investigation of developmental dyslexia (5R01HD111637-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10828791. Licensed CC0.

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