RT Journal Article
T1 The Acoustic Dimension of Reading: Does Musical Aptitude Affect Silent Reading Fluency?
A1 Foncubierta Muriel, José Manuel
A1 Herrero Machancoses, Francisco
A1 Buyse, Kris
A1 Fonseca Mora, María Carmen
AB Fluent reading in a foreign language includes a complex coordination process of visualand auditory nature as the reading brain transforms written symbols into speakingauditory patterns through subvocalization (inner voice). The auditory informationactivated for reading involves the projection of speech prosody and allows, beyondletters and words decoding, the recognition of word boundaries and the constructionof the melodic contours of the phrase. On the one hand, phonological awareness andauditory working memory have been identified in the literature as relevant factors inthe reading process as skilled readers keep the acoustic information in their auditoryworking memory to predict the construction of larger lexical units. On the other hand,we observed that the inclusion of musical aptitude as an element belonging to theacoustic dimension of the silent reading aptitude of adults learning a foreign languageremains understudied. Therefore, this study examines the silent reading fluency of 117Italian adult students of Spanish as a foreign language. Our main aim was to find amodel that could show if linguistic, cognitive and musical skills influence adults’ silentreading fluency. We hypothesized that learners’ contextual word recognition ability in L1and FL in addition to, phonological awareness, auditory working memory and musicalaptitude, elements related to the acoustic dimension of reading, would influence adults’silent reading fluency. Our structural modeling allows us to describe how these differentvariables interact to determine the silent reading fluency construct. In fact, the effectof musical aptitude on fluent silent reading in our model reveals to be stronger thanphonological awareness or auditory working memory.
PB Frontiers Media
SN 1662-4548
YR 2020
FD 2020-04
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/18319
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/18319
LA eng
NO Foncubierta, J. M., Herrero Machancoses, F., Buyse, K., & Fonseca Mora, M. C. (2020). The Acoustic Dimension of Reading: Does Musical Aptitude Affect Silent Reading Fluency? Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14:399. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00399
NO This study has been supported by the R+D project “Musicalaptitude, reading fluency and intercultural literacy of Europeanuniversity students” (FFI2016-75452-R, Spain, Ministerio deEconomía, Industria y Competitividad).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 2 jun 2026