Methodological and theoretical issues in cross-linguistic reading research

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.