ABSTRACT
Two experiments examined the effects of alphabet and fluency on unitization processes in reading. In Experiment 1, participants varying in German fluency read German text and circled instances of target letters. They made more errors on high-frequency than on low-frequency words, showing evidence for unitization, and this effect increased as fluency increased. In Experiment 2, students of English as a second language who had first languages with either a Roman or a non-Roman orthography read English text and circled instances of target letters. They made more errors on the than on other words, again showing evidence for unitization, and this effect was larger for the students with a Roman orthographic first language. These results suggest limited transfer of reading units from the first to the second language, with greater transfer when the two languages share the same alphabet.
