What research can tell us about the interaction between dyslexia and bilingualism

Abstract

Dyslexia is a reading difficulty of neurological basis which is often associated to a deficit at the phonological level of reading – but not restricted to it. In this review, we sought to identify relevant research conducted on the interaction between dyslexia and bilingualism in the last twenty years. For this purpose, eleven studies were selected from CAPES Journals Portal. Results of these studies reached contrasting conclusions, some indicating a continuum of dyslexic traces across the languages, while others emphasized the role of interacting factors such as orthographic depth and language granularity modulating the manifestations of dyslexia in each language. The implications of these findings for education are also discussed.