Introduction
With abandoning IQ as a reliable assessment metric of literary abilities, the examination of dyslexia has shifted towards the study of phonological development. Contextualization of dyslexia as a language-based learning difficulty that compromises single-word decoding signifies gaps in the phonological development of a child. However, these gaps likely originate due to individual circumstances, not bilingualism, which supports phonological development through cumulative improvement and early acquisition of learning abilities.
Dyslexia and Bilingualism
The number of spoken languages does not appear to play a role in the interruption of phonological progress for both monolingual and multilingual children. The persistence of reading difficulties among phonologically comparable languages, such as English and Portuguese, indicates that dyslexia is “not language dependent but due to individual differences” (Durkin, 2000, p. 12). In other words, phonological processing challenges in English are symptomatic of similar challenges in the native tongue. Moreover, “personal, and environmental factors” play a significant role in the individual variability in multilingual phonological development (McLeod & Verdon, 2017, p. 2). This lack of uniformity in the patterns of language acquisition signifies the dependence of phonological development on individual characteristics. To substantiate, Drysdale et al. (2014) note that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurological developmental disorder, from bilingual environments “did not exhibit additional language delays” (9). The inconsistencies between language difficulties and multilingualism indicate that phonological challenges might stem from individual circumstances.
Furthermore, bilingualism might be not just innocuous but also advantageous. “Significant differences in their onset-rime segmentation abilities” indicates bilingual children showed higher phonological awareness than their monolingual peers in kindergarten (Durkin, 2020, p. 12). The author also notes that these benefits were reflected in “superior performance on a number of phonological awareness tasks” when the children were at their novice low English proficiency levels (p. 13). In addition, phonological growth in one language reverberates across metalinguistic development in the other, suggesting a cumulative effect of bilingualism (Drysdale et al., 2014). Nonetheless, phonological difficulties develop cross-linguistically, indicating that learning improvements would also likely permeate multilingualism, as remarked by “intervention provided in all languages can produce positive results” (McLeod & Verdon, 2017, p. 1). Potential beneficial implications of bilingualism echoes in enhanced acquisition and cross-linguistic development of phonological abilities.
Conclusion
In summary, the current pediatric knowledge suggests that dyslexia likely results from a personal background unrelated to multilingualism. While language-based, phonological development challenges are not language-dependent, meaning that learning difficulties in English indicate difficulties in the first language. Multilingualism might, in fact, serve as an alleviating factor for these difficulties through early phonological awareness, cumulative and cross-linguistic effect of language improvements, and facilitated learning abilities.
References
Drysdale, H., Meer, L.V., & Kagohara, D.M. (2015). Children with autism spectrum disorder from bilingual families: a systematic review. Review journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2, 26-38.
Durkin C. (2000). Dyslexia and bilingual children–does recent research assist identification? Dyslexia, 6(4), 248–267.
McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech (2017). Tutorial: Speech assessment for multilingual children who do not speak the same language(s) as the speech-language pathologist. American journal of speech-language pathology, 26(3), 691-708.