Word Reading Processing by Bilingual Speakers: Brazilian Portuguese and English with and without ADHD

The research explores the relationship between bilingualism and ADHD, based on the way bilingual people process word reading. Faced with the many benefits of bilingualism for the individual, we set out to investigate what would happen if we combined the two phenomena. It is a fact that the bilingual person has improved executive control. Therefore, would it be beneficial for the subjects with ADHD if they were bilingual? The hypothesis for our study is that bilingual participants with ADHD would perform equivalently to bilingual participants without ADHD. We carried out a self-monitored reading task of isolated words, to measure the reading time of the words and the index of correct answers. The material consists of a set of 48 word/non-word/pseudoword pairs. The dependent variables are reading time for the first word, reading time for the second word, response time for the lexical decision of the word/pseudoword/non-word and index of correct answers. The independent variables are frequency and length of words and group of bilinguals (with and without ADHD). The results indicated that the bilingual participants with ADHD read the first and second word in less time than the group without ADHD and had an equivalent correct index, presenting evidence that points to an improved executive control for the bilingual subjects.